Preparing professional print?

[Zingy]

Hi Everyone!

Can anyone please give me proffesional guidelines on pre-press processes when dealing with photoshop art?????

I have a DVD cover and cd-face that needs to be proffessionaly printed(designed in photoshop).

The print press has sent me the following comments on the problems they have found:

We have found the following potential problems that we cannot fix. You can
have us continue production, but these issues may show up on your final
product.

NOTE 1
- type set as part of image

NOTE 2
- full-color disc printing uses neutral and/or brown tones, which can be
difficult to match on press

NOTE 3
- on-disc halftones fall outside of our recommended 15-85% tonal range.
Areas lighter than 15% may disappear, and areas darker than 85% may fill in.

NOTE 4
your on-disc design is similar to the color of the packaging design. Please
note that because of the different printing methods and the different
materials the end result may differ significantly.

The printers have a different color calibration than that of my artwork. The people's faces look sort of too orange or red and they mentioned that they were losing a lot of subtleties of the browns and blacks.

I have never dealt with a proffessional printing press before. Can anyone help me to overcome this challenge??!!

This will be greatly appreciated!! Thanks a million!!

Mon

 

[zavsays]

Assuming you have a printer's proof of the the DVD-Cover and CD-Face, the best you can do is calibrate your monitor to match those proofs you were given (individually), then color correct from there.

I'm not sure what "type set as part of image" means, except maybe they wanted this in layers so they could make a text change?

The 15-85% means they're looking for a dot pattern. Too dark and it plugs. Too light and the dot is too small to be anything but white. So not too dark or too light.

Another option is to speak directly to the person who color corrects these things at the printshop and beseech them to color correct it for you (with their valuable experience, flattery, etc...). The odds are, they can color correct this better than you could hope to do with one or two shots at it. As you pointed out, your monitor isn't calibrated for this purpose.