Bleed
Definition:Bleed allows for deviations (movement during cutting) in printing. Bleed is created by extending your artwork past the solid pink cut-lines on our templates, so in case there is any movement during cutting, there is additional artwork visible, and not the unprinted paper. We require a minimum of 3mm bleed on most products.
Bleed allowance
To allow for any deviations in cutting the paper to the finished page size an element that bleeds off the page is typically extended about 1/8” (3 mm) beyond the trim lines (corner or crop marks). The image shows an example of the bleed allowance according to the crop marks.
Note that the bleed allowance has to be also around all possible cut-outs from the actual artwork. The image shows an example of the bleed allowance for LP label.
Resolution of bitmap images
Definition of bitmap
Bitmaps images are exactly what their name says they are: a collection of bits that form an image. The image consists of a matrix of individual dots (or pixels) that all have their own color (described using bits, the smallest possible units of information for a computer). The unit of measurement used to describe the resolution of images is DPI (dots per inch).
Types of bitmap images
Bitmap images can contain any number of colors but we distinguish between three main categories (see the list below with their description and recommended resolution for each of them).
1. Line-art images only contain two colors, usually black and white. Sometimes these images are referred to as bitmaps because a computer has to use only 1 bit (on=black, off=white) to define each pixel. Recommended resolution: min. 800 dpi.
Grayscale images contain various shades of grey as well as pure black and white. Recommended resolution: min. 300 dpi.
3. Full color images. The color information can be described using a number of color spaces: RGB, CMYK or Lab for instance. Only CMYK color space is used for print. Recommended resolution: min. 300 dpi.
Open Prepress Interface (OPI)
An extension of the PostScript page-description language that lets you design pages with low-resolution placeholder images and replace the images with high-resolution images when creating separations.
PDF files containing OPI-images are commonly referred to as 'thin PDF files'. PDF files containing only high-resolution images are called 'fat PDF files'.
What is OPI?
The OPI industry-standard convention defines how to embed instructions in a PostScript output file to tell the output device where and how to merge the various text and graphics components of a page. OPI enables users to work with low-res preview images in their page makeup programs, and keep the high-res graphic images close to the image setter. This maximizes workstation productivity and minimizes network traffic.
In general, OPI works with TIFF files. OPI supports all the cropping and sizing commands issued in the page makeup program. When the page makeup program creates a PostScript output file of the job for the printer, it appends these commands, along with the pathname and filename, as PostScript comments in the job stream. When the OPI-compliant output device reads these comments, it acts upon them by retrieving and merging the high-res image.
Why remove OPIcomments from the final PDF?
The only advantage is actually file size. Thin PDF files can be small and quick to process. But there is a long list of disadvantages of using OPI within PDF-files:
1. One of the advantages of PDF is that you can visually check the files using Acrobat Reader or Exchange. But if you have an OPI-workflow using 'omit images', the PDF file will only contain OPI-references and you will not be able to view the file properly.
2. PDF files can be quite small due to the excellent compression options it offers. So using
OPI to limit the file size of PDF-files is often not necessary.
3. Preflighting software or PDF-editing tools are often useless with thin PDFs because the files don't contain all the final data.
4. Using Distiller is a great way of eliminating possible PostScript errors early on in the production chain. This advantage disappears when an OPI-solution can still insert corrupted images or incorrect PostScript code after having processed the clean PDF-file.
All of these arguments prove that a thin PDF is not always a great idea. In a lot of cases, it makes more sense to keep using OPI but to have the OPI-system deliver a fat PostScript to Distiller so that a fat PDF can be processed in the workflow.
How to remove OPI comments?
You should always deactivate the 'Preserve OPI Comments' option in Distiller if no OPI is used. This way such OPI-comments are deleted while creating the PDF-files and post processing tools are not confused by irrelevant OPI-comments.
Color space
Definition of color space
The color space is the format in which your digital artwork of a color image is saved; pertaining to its use and the types of colors that are intended to be displayed/printed.
CMYK
Definition: To reproduce full-color photographic images, typical printing presses use 4 colors of ink. The four inks are placed on the paper in layers of dots that combine to create the illusion of many more colors. CMYK refers to the 4 ink colors used by the printing press.
C is Cyan (blue), M is Magenta (red), Y is Yellow, and K is Black.
A mistake often made when submitting artwork for 4-color printing is not converting the images to the CMYK color space. This is needed so that the file can be separated into the four colors, so that a separate printing plate can be made for each of the colors.
RGB
Definition: A common color mode, RGB stands for the colors of Red, Green, Blue. Add red, green, and blue light to create white light. Because you ADD the colors together to get White, we call these RGB colors the additive primaries. Colors on screen are displayed by mixing varying amounts of red, green, and blue light.
RGB is the most common color mode used when creating graphics, even though graphics to be commercially printed are eventually converted to CMYK mode, the colors used in printing inks.
Spot color
Definition: A spot color is specially mixed ink using in printing. Spot color inks come in a rainbow of colors, including some specialty inks such as metallic and fluorescent. Unlike CMYK or process color, which creates colors by laying down layers of just 4 specific inks, spot colors are pre-mixed and you use one ink for each color in the publication.
There are different brands of spot color inks. The dominant spot color printing system is PANTONE. The Pantone Matching System or PMS consists of over 1,000 colors of ink. The Pantone system allows users to mix percentages of base inks (such as CMYK) to create new colors, either physically (these are called spot colors) or on the printed page using screens to allow certain amounts of ink through and then overlaying the base colors. The Pantone system also allows for many ‘special’ colors to be specified such as metallics and fluorescents.
Crop and registration marks
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
Crop marks- markings (usually thin lines) that show where a page or image has to be trimmed. Don’t forget to use the color ‘registration’ (most applications have such a color) if you create your own crop marks. Please make sure any crop marks you place in your layout are clear of the live printing area.
Registration marks - a cross-hair target outside the page or image area that is used to help align film separations or to align the printed images on the press sheet. The mark should appear on all separations.
Inserted template - our templates are created as vector graphics, with a special spot color (called “cutter”) and set to overprint. They are in 100% scale. You can import these templates to most graphic programs (QuarkXPress, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) Do not change the pre-set attributes (overprint and color settings).Please note the inserted template must remain in vectors – do not rasterize/flatten it with the actual artwork!!! Such a template cannot be removed from the artwork and would get printed.
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
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Include the right fonts with your files
Please make sure you include all used fonts while sending artwork in open files (QXD, InDO, AI, FH, etc.). We often receive files with missing fonts, corrupt fonts, or the wrong fonts. We usually do not substitute missing/corrupted with our own versions. This often results in subtle or obvious differences in the document including text reflow.
Avoid these common errors when sending your fonts:
• Missing fonts
Even if you only used a single character from a certain font, you'll have to send that font along with all the others. Don't forget to include the bold, italic, and other versions of the font as well if you used them. Not all fonts are text. Did you use a dingbat symbol for bullets or end-markers on articles? Include those fonts too.
• Missing fonts in EPS graphics
If you have embedded EPS files that include text be sure to send the fonts for those images as well. Generally it is best to convert the text to curves but sometimes this can alter the image in unwanted ways. If that's the case, you must send the font files for that text.
• Missing screen or printer fonts
Type 1 (PostScript) fonts have two files you must send- both a screen and a printer font. When you send only the screen font the file may look fine on screen but when printed you'll see font substitutions. Be sure to include both screen (bitmap or .pfm) and printer (postscript outline or .pfb) files for each Type 1 font.
• Wrong version
If you have both TrueType and Type 1 versions of the same font installed (which is not a good idea) you may inadvertently use one in your file then send the other version
for printing. Avoid this by only installing and using one version of the font.
Please pack/compress all font files into ZIP/SIT archive before any data transfer.
Black in overprint: In most cases, black text, lines and fills that overlap colorized backgrounds should be set to overprint. If this is forgotten, it may cause white spaces when the job is printed out of register.
White set to knock-out: QuarkXPress has the annoying habit of forgetting to switch off ‘overprint’ settings when black text is changed to another color. This can cause the text to disappear. Make sure white text is set to ‘knock-out’.
Rich black: For small black objects that are partly positioned on a light background and partly on a darker background, it is better to use a “rich black”. This is 100 percent black with varying percentanges of cyan, yellow, and magenta. This way the background does not shine through the black object. The top bar in the example below shows the problem.
ICC Profile
ICC (International color Consortium) Profiles describe the color attributes of a particular device or viewing requirement by defining a mapping between the source or target color space and a profile connection space (PCS). This PCS is either L*a*b* or CIE XYZ color space. Mappings may be done using tables, to which interpolation is applied, or through a series of parameters for transformations.To see how this works in practice, suppose we have a particular RGB and CMYK color space, and want to convert from this RGB to the CMYK. The first step is to obtain the two ICC profiles concerned. To perform the conversion, each RGB triplet R, G, B is first converted to the PCS using the RGB profile. If necessary the PCS is converted between L*a*b* and CIE XYZ, a well defined transformation. Then the PCS is converted to the four values of C, M, Y, K required.
A profile might define several mappings, according to rendering intent. These mappings allow a choice between closest possible color matching, and remapping the entire color range to allow for different gamuts.
The International color Consortium defines the format precisely but do not define algorithms or processing details. This means there is room for variation between different applications and systems that work with ICC profiles.
Every device that captures or displays color will have its own profile. Some manufacturers provide profiles for their products, and there are several products that allow end users to generate their own color profile, typically through the use of a colorimeter.
We do not use any ICC profiles in our plant. Please remove them from your artwork.
DeviceN
DeviceN is needed to preserve spot color information required for a composite printing workflow and for proper PDF generation.DeviceN color spaces
PostScript 3 and PDF 1.3 introduced the DeviceN color space, which allows arbitrary combinations of color channels for composite printing. Such color channel combinations include the widely known Pantone® Hexachrome™ six channel color system, or CMYK plus two spot colors, or Black plus one spot color. Without the DeviceN color space, images with such channel combinations cannot be represented in composite PostScript and PDF; they can be approximated with CMYK colors only. DeviceN color spaces can be used both for composite printing and for in-RIP separations.
The advantage of DeviceN color spaces is that many more color combinations with spot colors can be expressed for composite printing, they come into full play when printed on a device with separate physical color channels.
There are two disadvantages of DeviceN. The first problem is that many devices in use do not yet support PostScript 3 with DeviceN. Printing jobs with DeviceN color spaces on these devices will result in PostScript errors. The second problem is DeviceN color spaces are used frequently to express spot colors, and no CMYK based printer, not even a proof printer, can reproduce spot colors adequately.
Documents with spot colors can only be reproduced and viewed adequately when printed on a device with separate physical output channels for all used spot colors. This means that all CMYK or RGB based devices cannot reproduce documents with spot colors adequately. It even applies to the screen view of PDF documents with spot colors generated by Adobe Acrobat.
Please supply separated proofs altogether with your composite PDF if you use DeviceN color space in you artwork.
TOTAL INK COVERAGE
Depending on the paper stock, the type of printing process and the press itself, your printer can specify a certain ‘total ink coverage’ (TIC). This is the maximum amount of ink that any object on a page should contain. For example: if the TIC is 320 (as in our case), you can have objects on the page that contain 80 percent of cyan, magenta, yellow or black but a mixture of 100 percent cyan, 100 percent magenta, 70 percent yellow and 70 percent black has a TIC of 340 which is too much and will lead to smudging on the press.
ATTAINABLE DENSITY
In comparison with offset printing, the silk-screen prints have a more visible relief. This is due to the greater quantity of ink applied on the screen in comparison with an offset press, where a thin application of ink and the flat printing technique allow for color densities below 5% and over 90%. The results of screen printing are influenced by the screen used, by the capillary film and by the quantity of ink applied.
When a plate is prepared, the print-on screening dots are detailed onto the screen of the stencil. To print a light hue, the ink must be pressured through very small holes in the stencil. Some of those points are covered by the fibres of the stencil, and no ink is applied. This is why at very light values a screening dot deficit can occur; there is a lower limit of about 15% to the achievable saturation values.
Conversely, when printing at a high density, the points in the stencil are so close one to another that they tend to combine into large surfaces or stains. This limits the maximum density to around 85%.
As a result, it is necessary to plan half-tone prints with levels of opacity not falling below 15% or above 85%. Moreover, abrupt density changes must be avoided (e.g. artist on stage under spotlight, etc.). If this is unavoidable in the selected artwork, corrections will have to be made during the preparation of the film at the DTP studio.
Furthermore, this is not enough sometimes. There are some cases, where artwork is in CMYK (in printable values), but will definitely look far better printed by spot color (see an example below). The brownish color used there is C-20%, M-30%, Y-50%, K-0%, which are printable values, but their combination causes printing problems, so we recommend to print such as areas in spot color, that will ensure the final color will have a solid and consistent look.
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Transparency
Transparency is an effect applied to an object causing it to appear transparent and letting objects underneath show through. A common example of transparency is drop shadow. Transparency may be applied to an object in a number of different ways.
Transparency is possible in a number of graphics file formats. The term transparency is used in various ways by different people, but at its simplest there is “full transparency” i.e. something that is completely invisible. Of course, only part of a graphic would by fully transparent, or there would be nothing to see. More complex is “partial transparency” or “translucency” where the effect is achieved that a graphic is partially transparent in the same way as colored glass. Since ultimately a printed page or computer or television screen can only be one color at a point, partial transparency is always simulated at some level by mixing colors. There are many different ways to mix colors, so in some cases transparency is ambiguous.
The need to flatten transparent objects
The challenge with transparency is reproducing transparent effects in printed output or in exported file formats that do not support live transparency. To reproduce these effects, transparent objects and that interact with them must be flattened.
At its simplest, the process of flattening converts all the overlapping and interacting elements in a group of transparent objects into a collection of opaque elements that result in the same appearance as the original.
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Barcode: A machine-readable representation of information in a visual format on a surface. Originally barcodes stored data in the widths and spacing of printed parallel lines, but today they also come in patterns of dots, concentric circles, and hidden within images. Barcodes can be read by optical scanners called barcode readers or scanned from an image by special software. Barcodes are widely used to implement Auto ID Data Capture (AIDC) systems that improve the speed and accuracy of computer data entry. Barcodes inserted into the supplied artwork should be in 100% Black on a contrasting background color, and should be vectors or high resolution line-art. This will ensure the readability of barcode. Barcode should never be supplied as CMYK image.
Imposition
Imposition is a term used in the printing industry. Print operators will print books using large sheets of paper, which will be folded later. This allows for faster printing, simplified binding and lower production costs. Imposition is the process of arranging pages correctly prior to printing so that they fold in the correct order. To someone unfamiliar with the imposition process, the pages may seem to be arranged randomly; but after printing, the paper is folded, bound and trimmed. If correctly imposed, the pages should all appear in the correct orientation and readable sequence.
In the example above, a 16-page book is prepared for printing. There are eight pages on the front of the sheet, and the corresponding eight pages on the back. After printing, the paper will be folded in half vertically (page two falls on page three). Then it will be folded again horizontally (page four meets page five). A third fold completes this process. The example below shows the final result prior to binding and trimming.
The artwork for multiple-page booklets should be supplied as spreads and in printers order (see some examples below). The artwork can be also supplied as a singe pages, and we can impose it in our DTP studio. In both cases, the pages in artwork should be marked with correct page numbers.
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CONVERT FONT TO OUTLINE / CURVES
In general, unless there is a specific element of your artwork that would not work well being converted to a vector, or if you are only working in Photoshop, it is strongly advised to convert all your fonts to vector images (curves/outlines). We require that all vector fonts are converted to outlines or curves. No embedded or linked fonts.
Vectors
Vector art is key for printing. Since the art is made from a series of mathematical points it will print very crisp no matter how you resize the art. For instance you can take the same vector logo and print it on a business card or blow it up to billboard size and keep the same crisp quality. In contrast a raster graphic would blur incredibly if it were blown up from a business card size to billboard size.
FONT RASTERIZATION
In some cases, you may want to or need to use rasterized fonts. Font rasterization is the process of converting text from a vector description (as found in scalable fonts such as TrueType fonts) to a raster or bitmap description. This often involves some anti-aliasing on screen text to make it smoother and easier to read. It may also involve “hinting”, that is, the use of information precomputed for a particular font size.
Simple rasterization without antialiasing
The simplest form of rasterization is simple line-drawing with no antialiasing of any sort. This is the fastest method (that is, it requires the least computation to place on screen). This approach has the disadvantage that glyphs may lose their definition when rendered at small sizes. Therefore, many fonts contain “hints” which aid the system’s rasterizer in deciding where to render pixels for particularly troublesome areas in the glyphs, or sets of hand-tweaked bitmaps to be used at specific pixel sizes.
Rasterization with antialiasing
A more complicated approach is to use standard anti-aliasing techniques from computer graphics. This can be thought of as determining, for each pixel, how much of that pixel is occupied by the letter, and drawing that pixel with that degree of opacity. For example, when drawing a black letter on a white background, if a pixel ideally should be half filled (perhaps by a diagonal line from corner to corner) it would be drawn in 50% gray. Simple application of this procedure can lead to somewhat blurry glyphs: for example, if the letter includes a vertical line which should be one pixel wide but falls exactly between two pixels, it will appear on screen a two-pixel-wide gray line. This blurriness is a tradeoff of clarity for accuracy. Some systems demonstrate the opposite sacrifice by using hinting to force lines to fall within integral pixel coordinates.
Crop and registration marks
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
Crop marks- markings (usually thin lines) that show where a page or image has to be trimmed. Don’t forget to use the color ‘registration’ (most applications have such a color) if you create your own crop marks. Please make sure any crop marks you place in your layout are clear of the live printing area.
Registration marks - a cross-hair target outside the page or image area that is used to help align film separations or to align the printed images on the press sheet. The mark should appear on all separations.
Inserted template - our templates are created as vector graphics, with a special spot color (called “cutter”) and set to overprint. They are in 100% scale. You can import these templates to most graphic programs (QuarkXPress, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) Do not change the pre-set attributes (overprint and color settings).Please note the inserted template must remain in vectors – do not rasterize/flatten it with the actual artwork!!! Such a template cannot be removed from the artwork and would get printed.
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
Supplying native file: We use Adobe Creative Suite and only accept files in PDF or EPS. If you are using Photoshop, you can send us PSD files with template on one layer and all text and art flattened to another layer. If you must send us native InDesign or Illustrator files, and are unable to outline fonts or embed images, please make sure to send us images and fonts. We cannot accept source/native files for Quark XPess or any other layout programs.
Spot color
Definition: A spot color is specially mixed ink using in printing. Spot color inks come in a rainbow of colors, including some specialty inks such as metallic and fluorescent. Unlike CMYK or process color, which creates colors by laying down layers of just 4 specific inks, spot colors are pre-mixed and you use one ink for each color in the publication.
There are different brands of spot color inks. The dominant spot color printing system is PANTONE. The Pantone Matching System or PMS consists of over 1,000 colors of ink. The Pantone system allows users to mix percentages of base inks (such as CMYK) to create new colors, either physically (these are called spot colors) or on the printed page using screens to allow certain amounts of ink through and then overlaying the base colors. The Pantone system also allows for many ‘special’ colors to be specified such as metallics and fluorescents.
Please specify the spot colors clearly and in accordance with Pantone Matching System.
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Crop and registration marks
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
Crop marks- markings (usually thin lines) that show where a page or image has to be trimmed. Don’t forget to use the color ‘registration’ (most applications have such a color) if you create your own crop marks. Please make sure any crop marks you place in your layout are clear of the live printing area.
Registration marks - a cross-hair target outside the page or image area that is used to help align film separations or to align the printed images on the press sheet. The mark should appear on all separations.
Inserted template - our templates are created as vector graphics, with a special spot color (called “cutter”) and set to overprint. They are in 100% scale. You can import these templates to most graphic programs (QuarkXPress, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) Do not change the pre-set attributes (overprint and color settings).Please note the inserted template must remain in vectors – do not rasterize/flatten it with the actual artwork!!! Such a template cannot be removed from the artwork and would get printed.
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
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Correct PDFs
- Must be created from composite postscript using the Adobe Distiller application (i.e. by the process: Source application> Postscript> Adobe Acrobat Distiller> PDF file)
- Do not create it by saving or export directly from source application (e.g. Adobe lnDesign, QuarkXPress, etc.). PDF files created in this manner has a different internal structure, which is not identical to the requirements of the output equipment (proof, CtP, platesetter). Problems occur
most often here with processing fonts and with transparency, so in certain cases PDF files created in this manner cannot be processed whatsoever. In certain cases this can be resolved by resaving into postscript and back into PDF. Our DTP studio however does not bear responsibility for small text errors which may occur due to re-saving.
- Must be compatible with Acrobat 4.0 (PDF version 1.3), optimised for printing (press optimised)
- Do not use OPI comments during creation
Adobe Acrobat Distiller 6:
- Setting is accessible by means of the menu Settings > Edit Adobe PDF Settings [Ctri+E]
- The setting created can be saved using the command Save As... as a preset profile, which can then be used simply in processing further files.
Text near the trim lines - No text, logos, or similar graphics should be placed closer than 3 mm to the trim lines. This is due to deviations in cutting (a standard tolerance common with all printing).
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Hairlines: Some applications have a line thickness that is called “hairline”. Never use this, always stick to a specific width, e.g. 0.25 points. The problem with hairlines is that they are imaged as the finest possible line on any given device. This may be fine on a 300 dpi laser printer but a 1 pixel wide line on a 2400 dpi image setter is hardly visible. Some RIPs allow the operator to set a minimum line width to avoid this trap. Just don’t count on this workaround and avoid hairlines entirely. The smallest line width you can use depends on the press, paper, speed,... Consult your rep if necessary. As a general rule, never make a line smaller than 0.2 points.
Colorized text: Don’t colorize small text (e.g. < 8 points) in 2 or more process colors. The slightest registration problem on the press makes such text illegible.
Colorized thin lines: Don’t colorize thin lines (e.g. < 1/2 point) in 2 or more process colors.
Crop and registration marks
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
Crop marks- markings (usually thin lines) that show where a page or image has to be trimmed. Don’t forget to use the color ‘registration’ (most applications have such a color) if you create your own crop marks. Please make sure any crop marks you place in your layout are clear of the live printing area.
Registration marks - a cross-hair target outside the page or image area that is used to help align film separations or to align the printed images on the press sheet. The mark should appear on all separations.
Inserted template - our templates are created as vector graphics, with a special spot color (called “cutter”) and set to overprint. They are in 100% scale. You can import these templates to most graphic programs (QuarkXPress, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) Do not change the pre-set attributes (overprint and color settings).Please note the inserted template must remain in vectors – do not rasterize/flatten it with the actual artwork!!! Such a template cannot be removed from the artwork and would get printed.
Adding crop marks and/or registration marks are not necessary if you are using our templates.
Page orientation - Supplied artwork should always match the artwork template. E.g. the artwork for LP sleeve should be always created accordingly to the template below (not to scale) and never in separated files for front and back (or even spine).
Page orientation - Supplied artwork should always match the artwork template. E.g. the artwork for LP sleeve should be always created accordingly to the template below (not to scale) and never in separated files for front and back (or even spine).
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Correct PDFs
- Must be created from composite postscript using the Adobe Distiller application (i.e. by the process: Source application> Postscript> Adobe Acrobat Distiller> PDF file)
- Do not create it by saving or export directly from source application (e.g. Adobe lnDesign, QuarkXPress, etc.). PDF files created in this manner has a different internal structure, which is not identical to the requirements of the output equipment (proof, CtP, platesetter). Problems occur
most often here with processing fonts and with transparency, so in certain cases PDF files created in this manner cannot be processed whatsoever. In certain cases this can be resolved by resaving into postscript and back into PDF. Our DTP studio however does not bear responsibility for small text errors which may occur due to re-saving.
- Must be compatible with Acrobat 4.0 (PDF version 1.3), optimised for printing (press optimised)
- Do not use OPI comments during creation
Adobe Acrobat Distiller 6:
- Setting is accessible by means of the menu Settings > Edit Adobe PDF Settings [Ctri+E]
- The setting created can be saved using the command Save As... as a preset profile, which can then be used simply in processing further files.
Hairlines: Some applications have a line thickness that is called “hairline”. Never use this, always stick to a specific width, e.g. 0.25 points. The problem with hairlines is that they are imaged as the finest possible line on any given device. This may be fine on a 300 dpi laser printer but a 1 pixel wide line on a 2400 dpi image setter is hardly visible. Some RIPs allow the operator to set a minimum line width to avoid this trap. Just don’t count on this workaround and avoid hairlines entirely. The smallest line width you can use depends on the press, paper, speed,... Consult your rep if necessary. As a general rule, never make a line smaller than 0.2 points.
Embossing, hot foil stamping - Artwork should be always created in curves/ vector graphic, and either in special spot color (called e.g. foil) as a part of the actual artwork, or in 100% black, but this should be in a separate file. We can also accept high-resolution line-art images, but the resolution should not be less than 1200 dpi. These specifications also apply for spot-varnish artwork.
