Showing posts with label Brief 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brief 2. Show all posts
Newspaper club - an outlet for creative newsprint
I visited the newspaper club's website and pulled this statement from it that sums u what they are about:
"This is Newspaper Club. We're here to help you make your own newspapers. Whatever you'd like to make by putting ink on newsprint, we'd like to help you.
"This is Newspaper Club. We're here to help you make your own newspapers. Whatever you'd like to make by putting ink on newsprint, we'd like to help you.
Newspaper Club was made by the Really Interesting Group, and is supported by 4iP. You can follow us on Twitter, read our blog or see what people have tagged as 'newspaperclub' on Flickr.
And if you want us in a nutshell it's this; we think the web is wonderful and printed newspapers are a tremendous, highly-evolved way of reading stuff. We think combining the two is a good idea. We're not about news or any particular form of content, we're about ink on newsprint. Whatever you think would be good to print that way; we think you're probably right."
Maximise the image to see the definitive price list. It seems that full colour printing of my covers for the G2 brief is not an option considering the minimum quantity and price, but the site is a great resource, and the whole process can be initiated online and delivery on minimum orders is free. I might get in touch with them to find out if they could print a 1 off full colour publication for the sake of this module, but it seems unlikely, I can but try!
- hold that thought-
their FAQ section says this in relation to my query:
Can I have a sample newspaper to look at?
Yes. But if you want to print in colour (above 300 copies), the easiest thing is to get any tabloid newspaper (like The Mirror or The Sun), take out a few pages, and that’s your sample. The paper and the reproduction will be exactly what we’re offering.
Can I print fewer than 500 copies in colour?
Unfortunately not. For colour printing, we use a huge web offset press which is designed for printing hundreds of thousands of copies as quickly as possible. Due to the effort involved in setting up the press, and the speed of the machine, we can’t offer colour printing for any fewer than 500 copies.
This means I could get a sample cover printing, but I cant help thinking I would be messing them about a bit only wanting a free sample. I would definately have to ring them to inquire about this idea. It would be good to have to compare with covers I have printed, and also to refer back to in the future if I ever need to use these facilities.
Here's some examples of what's been done there, just to show how useful this facility really is.
Here's some examples of what's been done there, just to show how useful this facility really is.
Full colour overlays, looking vereh nice - the magenta looks really pink to me though..
As far as im aware, this is what they use to print their papers, this will be the one colour press.
Nice example of effective duplexing, no paper cockle or over saturation
Full page of black doesnt seem to work 100%, but it adds to the DIY feel of this paper.
Screen angles & Moire patterns
In newspaper printing, images are split into their Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key separations and the seperate CMYK colours are transered onto plates, which are then overlayed in a lithography similar printing process. To ensure image quality however the separations are also bitmapped, the makes it possible to attain gradient like effects by altering the concentration of bitmapped dots across an image. When the four plates are overlayed with the bitmap, this creates a moire pattern, which is a cluster of cmyk dots which looks like this:
As you can see, the clusters which form the 'Moire" pattern are achieved by rotating the screen angle of each colour separation. The most successful Moire patterns for colour printing often form a 17 point star from the screen rotations. This is done by using specific angles of rotation which are as follows.
Cyan - 15'
Magenta - 75'
Yellow - 0'
Black - 45'
That set of angles seems to be pretty standard across industry, and always yields the same moire pattern. But, this isnt where the process ends pre print. As well as specifying angles, the DPI (dots per inch) and LPI (lines per inch) have to be specified too. I found that through printing out different experiments using different variations and combinations of LPI/DPI, that generally, a high LPI, needs to be balanced with a low DPI - the higher an LPI, the less space there is between dots, so finding the optimum spacing is key. This can vary from image to image, based on the images size, but for a half newsprint size publication like G2, an LPI frequency of 65 combined with a DPI of 600 does the trick. the low LPI means a higher DPI is needed. This is so there are more pixels and therefor more space for the dots to sit in.
These were the settings used to create the final covers of my G2 covers, but the actual process was much larger and consisted of:
1. Isolating the Jpeg of my artwork's channels into CMYK and then altering their image mode to 'Greyscale'. This also prompts you to disregard any other channels (do.)
2. seperately bitmapping each channel with the same DPI and LPI, but then making sure the screen angle of each separation matched the specified number to get the right angle. for example cyan, (Image> Mode> Bitmap> DPI: 600 LPI frequency: 65> Rotation 15 degrees.)
3. After bitmapping, change the images mode to duotone, but only use a monotone of the specific colour, so in this instance cyan (it has to be process cyan for this to work correctly, not any old shade of blue).
4. Save the image out as a jpeg (the file size is huge at this point so a tiff may destroy your computer) Also when saving out make sure you call each separation its colour name to avoid confusion later.
5. Repeat this process using the different screen angles for each separation.
6. Pull all separations back together in photoshop, making sure each layer is on multiply (in the layers panel) and in the order C,M,Y,K. then save the image out as a jpeg - if you want you can then pull the resolution back down to 300 DPI and this should enhance the effect.
As you can see on the covers I have produced this emulates a newsprint effect on screen. In print it also looks convincing, although the moire pattern is slightly large, this is altered if you resize the image or change its DPI down to 300 when saving the final out. The next study I need to take is how this pattern prints on an inkjet printer. because mocks I have done, look a little dull, but this may be down to the bitmapping and the visual pattern it makes. My theory is however, thin newspaper should take this amount of ink, because it has manually taken the print quality down, meaning less ink will actually be transfered onto the stock.
To see the results of this effect, see post named: 'All G2 Covers'
As you can see, the clusters which form the 'Moire" pattern are achieved by rotating the screen angle of each colour separation. The most successful Moire patterns for colour printing often form a 17 point star from the screen rotations. This is done by using specific angles of rotation which are as follows.
Cyan - 15'
Magenta - 75'
Yellow - 0'
Black - 45'
That set of angles seems to be pretty standard across industry, and always yields the same moire pattern. But, this isnt where the process ends pre print. As well as specifying angles, the DPI (dots per inch) and LPI (lines per inch) have to be specified too. I found that through printing out different experiments using different variations and combinations of LPI/DPI, that generally, a high LPI, needs to be balanced with a low DPI - the higher an LPI, the less space there is between dots, so finding the optimum spacing is key. This can vary from image to image, based on the images size, but for a half newsprint size publication like G2, an LPI frequency of 65 combined with a DPI of 600 does the trick. the low LPI means a higher DPI is needed. This is so there are more pixels and therefor more space for the dots to sit in.
These were the settings used to create the final covers of my G2 covers, but the actual process was much larger and consisted of:
1. Isolating the Jpeg of my artwork's channels into CMYK and then altering their image mode to 'Greyscale'. This also prompts you to disregard any other channels (do.)
2. seperately bitmapping each channel with the same DPI and LPI, but then making sure the screen angle of each separation matched the specified number to get the right angle. for example cyan, (Image> Mode> Bitmap> DPI: 600 LPI frequency: 65> Rotation 15 degrees.)
3. After bitmapping, change the images mode to duotone, but only use a monotone of the specific colour, so in this instance cyan (it has to be process cyan for this to work correctly, not any old shade of blue).
4. Save the image out as a jpeg (the file size is huge at this point so a tiff may destroy your computer) Also when saving out make sure you call each separation its colour name to avoid confusion later.
5. Repeat this process using the different screen angles for each separation.
6. Pull all separations back together in photoshop, making sure each layer is on multiply (in the layers panel) and in the order C,M,Y,K. then save the image out as a jpeg - if you want you can then pull the resolution back down to 300 DPI and this should enhance the effect.
As you can see on the covers I have produced this emulates a newsprint effect on screen. In print it also looks convincing, although the moire pattern is slightly large, this is altered if you resize the image or change its DPI down to 300 when saving the final out. The next study I need to take is how this pattern prints on an inkjet printer. because mocks I have done, look a little dull, but this may be down to the bitmapping and the visual pattern it makes. My theory is however, thin newspaper should take this amount of ink, because it has manually taken the print quality down, meaning less ink will actually be transfered onto the stock.
To see the results of this effect, see post named: 'All G2 Covers'
Why colour halfotne does not work for effective newspirinting.
Colour halftone can look good, but it is an automated version of quite a complicated process, and on software like photoshop it is often much more effective to avoid these automated processes, because by nature they cut corners and therefor you will not be able to manipulate the conditions of the process to get the results you want, time and time again.
I have experimented with colour halftone and used screen angles, but the tool misses out some funcitons that I would prefer to automate myself. the end result is that it basically drastically reduces image quality, and the nature of the dots (often being in cross shapes because of very high LPI) makes for fuzzy outlines and questionable colour fills...
...as you can see above. It also makes the Moire pattern tile in strange ways, which you would not come across in industry because they basically dont work. That is basically why colour halftoning shouldnt be used for effective emulation of newspaper printing. I'll go into more depth about the actual process behind the outcome more in the next post I make, where I'll talk about Moire patters, screen angles and image quality.
I have experimented with colour halftone and used screen angles, but the tool misses out some funcitons that I would prefer to automate myself. the end result is that it basically drastically reduces image quality, and the nature of the dots (often being in cross shapes because of very high LPI) makes for fuzzy outlines and questionable colour fills...
...as you can see above. It also makes the Moire pattern tile in strange ways, which you would not come across in industry because they basically dont work. That is basically why colour halftoning shouldnt be used for effective emulation of newspaper printing. I'll go into more depth about the actual process behind the outcome more in the next post I make, where I'll talk about Moire patters, screen angles and image quality.
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