Printing a file should be a straightforward experience, but it wasn't always that way in Adobe Illustrator. Prior to Illustrator CS, getting a file to print correctly often meant opening the Page Setup dialog, the Document Setup dialog, and the Print dialog. With the release of Illustrator CS, however, Adobe updated Illustrator's printing engine and interface and modeled them after the Print dialog found in Adobe InDesign. Now, you can go directly to the Print dialog and control all of your print specifications in one place. Because every print job is different and has specific requirements, we've organized the contents of this chapter to match the order in which print features appear in the Print dialog. In this way, you can read the chapter and use it as a handy reference as well. The General Print PanelAs you're designing a job, printing quick and accurate proofs to your laser or inkjet printer is just as important as printing final output to an image setter. For this reason, you'll find that Adobe put many often-used settings in the General panel of the Print dialog (Figure 11.1). This way you can quickly print consistent and accurate files from Illustrator without having to dance between multiple dialogs or settings panels. At the top of the Print dialog you'll find a pop-up to choose from predefined Print Presets (more on Print Presets later in this chapter), a pop-up to choose which printer you want to print to (extremely useful for those of you who have several different printers at your disposal), and a pop-up to choose a PPD (PostScript Printer Definition) file. Figure 11.1. The General panel in the Print dialog contains the most often-used print settings.A PPD file contains specific information about a printer, including media dimensions, color information, and printer-specific settings like resolution. Illustrator makes an educated guess to select the right PPD file for your selected printer, although you can override it and choose your own if you need to. You can choose a PPD only when a PostScript device is selected as your printer. Along the left side of the Print dialog is a list of all of the different panels you can choose from to specify a range of print options. Beneath the list of panels is a print preview, which gives you a better idea of what will print. But this is no ordinary print previewit's interactive. You can click and drag the artwork around in the preview to determine which part of the paper the art will print on (Figure 11.2). Hold the Shift key while dragging to constrain movement to the X or Y axis and double-click anywhere on the preview to reset the positioning to the default. As you specify changes in the Print dialog, like adding trim marks, you'll see those appear in the preview as well. Figure 11.2. If you're an experienced Illustrator user, you may have used the Page tool to print different parts of a page; you can now do this directly from the Print dialog by moving the artwork within the interactive print preview.
Basic Print OptionsAs in just about any other program, in the Print dialog, you can specify the number of copies as well as the range of pages that you want to print. Although it's true that Illustrator doesn't have multiple pages, when you're using the Page Tiling option (which we'll cover shortly), each tile is assigned a page number, which allows you to specify exactly what will print. When you specify a range of pages, use a comma as a separation device and a hyphen to indicate a continuous string of pages. For example, you can specify a range of 1-3, 6, which will print pages 1, 2, 3, and 6.
In the Media section of the dialog, you can specify the size of the paper on which you want to print. The items that appear in this pop-up are defined by the PPD file that is chosen for your printer. If your printer supports it, you'll also have the ability to define custom media sizes; being able to do so is extremely useful for those of you who have large-format inkjet printers, or for those of you who are printing to image setters or plate setters. Additionally, you can choose an orientation to flip a page on its side. Changing the orientation can be extremely important when printers want to choose which side of a sheet the press will grip from. You can use the Print Layers pop-up menu to specify what kinds of layers will or won't print: Visible & Printable Layers, Visible Layers, or All Layers. Additionally, you can set a custom scale size at which to print your file. The Do Not Scale option prints your file at actual size, the Fit to Page option reduces or enlarges your artwork so that it fills the entire size of the output media, and the Custom Scale settings allow you to specify any scale size for the height and/or the width. The Setup Print PanelWhen you print a file, you can specify which parts of the artwork will print by choosing from the three different Crop Artwork settings (Figure 11.3):
Figure 11.3. Using the different Crop Artwork settings can make it easy to print the parts of a file that you want.
Using Page TilingPage Tiling is a feature that was initially added to Illustrator to enable users to print a single large file across several smaller pages. This would allow a designer to assemble a large document at actual size using a printer with smaller media sizes. However, over the years, designers learned to use this feature to create a single large artboard, using the tiled areas as a substitute for multiple pages. For example, setting up a document at 11 x 17 inches with Page Tiling would result in two 8½ x 11 pages. There are three Page Tiling settings that you can choose from (Figure 11.4):
Figure 11.4. You can simulate a multiple page document by setting up a large page with one of the tiling settings.
Because tiling is something you might want to set in your document before you even start working on your design, be aware of the Done button that appears at the bottom of the Print dialog. Clicking Done keeps the settings you've made in the Print dialog and returns you to the document for further editing and designing without actually printing the file. Although it may seem odd to open the Print dialog to specify tiling settings, remember that the main reason for tiling in Illustrator is specific to printing.
The Marks and Bleed Print PanelWhen printing a page for final output, you need to add page marks and bleeds to help printers print the job correctly on press. Trim marks tell a printer where to cut the paper; registration marks help a printer align each separated plate correctly; color bars help a printer calibrate color correctly on press; and page information makes it possible for printers to easily identify each separated plate (Figure 11.5). Figure 11.5. A printer uses a variety of printer marks to help ensure that the job prints correctly.Of course, you don't always need all of this information on each printout, so you choose them individually (for example, on a one-color job, registration marks aren't necessary). Additionally, you can choose between Roman and Japanese style trim marks (refer to Appendix C, Illustrator Preferences, for examples of these). The trim mark weight determines the width of the strokes used to create trim marks, and the offset determines how far from the page the trim marks will appear.
Specifying BleedWhen you have artwork that extends beyond the boundary of a page, you can specify a bleed setting to ensure that the printable area of the page includes the extra bleed area. When the bleed settings are set to zero, even if you've extended artwork beyond the boundary of the artboard, the art clips to the edge of the artboard. Additionally, if you specify a bleed setting, you'll need to print to a paper size large enough to display the page size and the bleed as well. For more information on bleeds, see the sidebar, "Take Heed: Add Bleed."
The Output Print PanelThe Output panel in the Print dialog is a prepress operator's dream come true. With the ability to specify color separations and control the behavior of inks, a print service provider can output Illustrator files with confidence. Illustrator supports three different printing modes, each of which is used for a different workflow (Figure 11.7):
Figure 11.7. Printing a composite is perfect for proofing (left). Printing separations is required for printing colors on a printing press (right).
Specifying Color SeparationsIf you choose either of the two separations print modes, you can specify additional options for how the color separation will print. You can choose to print Right Reading Emulsion Up or Down, and whether to print a Positive or Negative image. You'll notice that as you choose these settings, the interactive print preview updates to show you how the art will print. You can also choose a printer resolution setting; these settings are specific to the printer to which you've chosen to print. This information comes from the PPD file chosen for your printer or RIP. If there are spot colors present in your file, you can choose to convert them all to separate as process colors by choosing the Convert All Spot Colors to Process option. In Illustrator CS2, this option is even available when you're printing composite proofs. When you choose the Overprint Black option, all objects that are colored 100% K overprint. See "Understanding Overprints" later in this chapter for more information on overprinting. In the Document Ink Options section of the Output panel, you can specify which plates are sent to the printer and what settings each plate uses (Figure 11.8). Colors that appear with a printer icon on the far left print. To prevent an ink from printing, click the printer icon to remove it. Inks that appear with a four-color icon separate as process colors. Inks that appear with a solid color icon print to their own plate as a spot (custom) color. Clicking a solid color icon causes just that color to separate as a process color. Additionally, you can specify custom Frequency, Angle, and Dot Shape settings for each ink individually. Figure 11.8. The different icons that display in the Document Ink Options section of the Output panel indicate how the inks print.The Graphics Print PanelThe settings in the Graphics panel in the Print dialog are mainly for specifying options for your print device. Prior to the release of Illustrator CS, the Document Setup dialog box of Illustrator contained a setting called Object Resolution, which determined the flatness setting for Bézier paths at output time. In Illustrator CS and CS2, the flatness setting is set by default, based on information from the selected PPD file. You can override this setting and use the slider to sacrifice path quality for print performance (although we don't suggest doing so). By default, Illustrator downloads subsets of fonts to the printer when you print a file. By downloading a subset we simply mean that Illustrator only sends the parts of a font that are required to print the text you have in your document. If you have the word "me" in your document, Illustrator only sends the letters "m" and "e" to the printer instead of the entire font (this practice speeds up print times). You can override this behavior and choose Complete, which forces Illustrator to download the entire font to the printer at print time. Alternatively, you can choose not to download any fonts at all. You choose this option if you have fonts installed in your printer (some printers can contain hard drives and store fonts internally). By default, Illustrator chooses a PostScript Language Level that your selected printer will support. Language Level 3 PostScript can print certain documents with transparency more reliably, and it also contains Smooth Shading technology that helps prevent banding from appearing in gradients. Additionally, you can choose whether to send data to the printer in ASCII or the default Binary format. As we discussed in Chapter 7, 3D and Other Live Effects, the resolution at which Live Effects are rasterized is determined by the setting in the Document Raster Effects Resolution dialog. Here in the Graphics panel of the Print dialog, Illustrator displays the current setting in that dialog, allowing you to double check to make sure the setting is indeed correct for printing (Figure 11.9). Illustrator won't allow you to change the setting from the Print dialog because, as you learned in Chapter 7, changing the resolution setting may change the appearance of your artwork. To change the resolution setting, click the Done button in the Print dialog and choose Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings. You can then return to the Print dialog to print your file. Figure 11.9. Although you can't change the Document Raster Effects Resolution setting from the Print dialog, the Graphics panel does alert you to the current setting in case you need to make a change.
The Color Management Print PanelThe topic of color management really requires a book of its own. In fact, if you really want to learn everything there is to know about color management, you should check out Real World Color Management, Second Edition, by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy, and Fred Bunting (Peachpit Press, 2004). Within the scope of this book (the one you are now reading), however, here are some brief explanations for the settings found in the Color Management panel of the Print dialog:
The Advanced Print PanelThe Advanced panel in the Print dialog gives you control over important settings like overprinting and transparency flattening. If your document contains overprint settings, you can choose from one of three different settings to control overprint behavior:
If your document contains transparency, you can choose from a list of predefined Transparency Flattener Presets. Illustrator ships with three presets called Low Resolution, Medium Resolution, and High Resolution, but you can also define your own by choosing Edit > Transparency Flattener Presets. For detailed information about what these settings are used for and what the differences between them are, see "The Truth About Transparency," later in this chapter.
Defining Print PresetsAs you've undoubtedly seen, Illustrator's Print dialog contains a plethora of different settings, and going through each panel to make sure the settings are correct is an exercise in patience in and of itself. Print presets allow you to capture all of the settings set in the different Print dialog panels so that you can easily retrieve those settings at any time. To create a Print preset, either click the Save Preset button at the bottom of the Print dialog or choose Edit > Print Presets where you can manage your presets. Print Presets are saved in XML and are cross-platform, so you can import and export them and distribute them among others.
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