Understanding the Business of Commercial Printing

Do you have a new business and you would like to have printed advertising materials produced by a commercial printer? Then before you get into awarding your job to a particular printing press, there are just some things that you have to understand regarding the business of commercial printing. 1. The Process of Printing - Commercial printers are unlike inkjet or even laser printers that you use at home or at the office. These kinds of printers are attached directly to the computer and whatever document you send to it for printing, it will just directly “instruct” the printer what to do. The printer then “obediently” follows the setting to the letter. Commercial printing, however, is different. It still has to process the colors because they do not follow the RGB format but rather the four-color or the CMYK format. This will have to undergo processing before the printer will understand what you want it to do. 2. Color Proofing - Computers, digital cameras and even TV screens allow you to view images and designs in RGB format. RGB stands for the colors Red, Green and Blue. Regular printers can understand this format and can easily translate them into print. Commercial printing however can only recognize CMYK mode, which stands for the colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. All the other colors are a mixture of these four basic colors. That is why you would often hear or read the phrase, “four-color printing”. While you get “full color” output, the process is called four-color printing because of the mixture of the C, M, Y, and K inks. Since CMYK reads four colors as opposed to the RGB of your computer monitor, you will need to ask the printer for a copy of the colored proof, that is the final color output after your layout was processed by the image setter. The image setter produces the film that the commercial printer read. It contains information about colors and the percentages needed to register a certain image. It had been a complicated process but nowadays, there are now computerized machines that have made this process so much easier with less percentage for error. After your layout has been processed by the image setter, it will print out a colored proof. This will give you an idea of how the colors will come out during printing. The colored proof will also allow you the leeway to edit the colors if they are too dark or not as bright as you would want them to be. You cannot just rely on your computer monitor and your inkjet printout if you want to know the exact shades of your photos, titles, and text. You will need the color proof to know this. Some printers can give you the first proof for free. But if you will need to make amendments, they will have to process your file once again so the second processing and subsequently the second proofing may incur additional charges on top of the packaged cost that they gave you. Commercial printing is an entirely different process. If you need advertising materials and this is your first time to go to a commercial printer, it would be best to read about the process so that you will not be short changed or taken advantage of by some unscrupulous printers.

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