Photoshop CS4 and Type

[David Kunkel]

Although I'm 'only a designer', I spent 12 years in a print shop doing customer design services, production art, and preflight. Now I do a lot of tradeshow graphics where Photoshop is the best way to deal with large (huge) bitmaps, type, and transparency together--this is where Photoshop excels over InDesign, Quark, or Illustrator. I always convert my Photoshop text to a vector shape before sending these files to the production house, by right-clicking on the text layer and choosing "Convert to shape". I'll split it onto multiple layers using the vector tools if I have to recreate multi-color text (such as a contrast-colored bullet). I'll usually follow up by saving as a Photoshop EPS, though that's not necessary. The EPS preview adds a lot to the file size but compression brings it most of the way back; I'll make the EPS half size at double resolution to reduce the preview's pixel count and minimize the size bump. The resulting vector art is well received by all the vendors I work with, and I think it will be seen by the trapping software just like any other generic vector path would.

[WillAdams]

Not a new technique, but kind of off-the-wall and not used that often (everyone I've told about it has always been surprised):

- drag the PhotoShop .psd to Adobe Illustrator (be sure to choose the option to keep text editable, &c. --- you may need to re-arrange / merge the layers so that all text / vector elements you need to fix are above any transparency effects)

- once in Adobe Illustrator one has compleat control over how text is coloured and if need be, one can re-draw any elements which aren't working out from how PhotoShop had represented them.

William

[pacart]

Please explain to me why people are doing vector in photoshop anyways. Photoshops main purpose is for raster images, if you need to scale something in any number of sizes why not just go straight to illustrator, thats what it is for. Then you don't have to worry about dpi at all and if your art has raster images you can either put the resulting eps or ai file into photoshop, indesign or bring raster into illustrator.

I guess im just saying i use the programs for their main purpose....

Raster in photoshop
Vector in illustrator
bring them together in Indesign

[David Kunkel]

I re-read the thread and felt I should add to my earlier post:

When saved as an .EPS, Photoshop's "fill" layers with vector clipping paths seem to behave just like vector objects created in Illustrator: mathematically defined edges with mathematically defined fills. I've examined tradeshow graphic outputs where the output file's line screen was 150dpi (more is unnecessary when the output is hanging 12 feet off the floor) and through a loupe the vector objects (that used to be type) were definitely seen to be at the device's output resolution of 1200 to 2400dpi. While I've talked a lot about tradeshow artwork that's typically printed out on inkjet-like devices, I've also found these things to be true in commercial printing on standard presses.

InDesign and Illustrator also clip bitmaps with a vector edge anytime a photo appears in a frame or behind a clipping path, and the trap software seems to handle them just fine. I don't see any reason why a bitmap clipped by a vector path in Photoshop and saved as an EPS should be handled any different by the imagesetter/platesetter then a bitmap placed in Illustrator over a rich background, clipped by a vector path, and saved as an EPS--unless it's going through some process that's rasterizing the whole thing, like at the one printshop that was outputting my EPSs via Photoshop and rasterizing them at the "open" dialog!

PDFs are unreliable and I avoid them like the plague because of the way they downsample bitmaps, break transparency effects into bitmaps butted against vector art (with the occasional gap or color shift visible in output), and color manage unpredictably when their settings conflict with device settings. Like in the example above, some print vendor's output devices or workflows rasterize everything in a Photoshop native file, depending on the output workflow. I've found that EPS has always been the most reliable output for me.

Finally, a friendly comment about "stupid" designers: We go to school for four to six years to learn how to create effective design. While I had the opportunity to work in and learn from a print shop, most designers don't, and they really can't take another two to four years to learn how to be print professionals as well as designers. It's no wonder that they solve their design and output problems differently than a prepress tech or pressman would like, but we bring in the work that fills the job jackets and give the presses something to run, so roll your eyes and chuckle, and make it work! We need each other, and trust me, you wouldn't want to trade 'challenges'.

[WillAdams]

The problem is PhotoShop's colour controls for type and the interaction w/ that and the .eps and .pdf filters are so primitive that one can't get black type w/ overprinting, or spot colour type.

The reason why people use PhotoShop for everything is the old saw about having a hammer and seeing nothing but nails.

William

[pacart]

FYI - PEOPLE

JUST REMEMBER AT THE END BEFORE IT HITS THE PAPER, THE ART IS ALWAYS RASTERIZED.

JUST SAYIN.

AND FOR THE COMMENT ABOUT NOT WANTING TO TRADE "challenges" a lot of us fill both rolls and have no problem designing for print and making sure that it is ready to go when all is said and done.

sorry about the capitalization. not yelling.

[claude72]

Originally Posted by pacart

JUST REMEMBER AT THE END BEFORE IT HITS THE PAPER, THE ART IS ALWAYS RASTERIZED.

Yes, but not rasterized the same way that Photoshop does: the main différence is that a RIP rasterized everything in 1-bit screened pictures, using different ways to rasterize the vectors, the contone pixels and the bitmap pixels...

... althought Photoshop rasterized text in contone mode when placed in a contone picture, and the RIP has then to rasterized again from the contone pixels to 1-bit screened pictures, adding haze on the text.

No EPS isn't dead, it is a good format to use, i prefer it over pdf.

Not completely dead, but 3/4 dead: AI, PSD and TIFF do the job most times...
... but EPS has still some interesting features that help greatly in some cases!

For me, PDF is only an "exchange" format, not a real work-format for imports...
For Photoshop pictures I prefer TIFF or PSD instead of PDF, and for Illustrator files I prefer AI or even EPS...
... but PDF has some (new) interesting features that help greatly in some cases

The way i deal with text in photoshop is to make it a 600dpi bitmap file, then place it into the document in indesign. Works everytime, looks smooth like vector. I should say prints smooth like vector, looks like crap on your screen sometimes

Good solution, but for offset printing, 600 ppi is a little bit too low: 800 ppi is acceptable, better use 1000-1200 ppi.

Please explain to me why people are doing vector in photoshop anyways.

The short answer is: incompetence.

The long answer is because they don't know how softwares, display, rasterization, ripping and printing work, and they simply trust:
- their screen, believing that if it looks good on the screen, it will print fine,
- and Adobe, believing that if Adobe put this feature in the software, so it works and can be used without any trouble...
... forgetting that Photoshop is not only made for print jobs, but also made for many other jobs needing to work on pictures and able to use text in the pictures without any problem (like Web, video...)

But some are also stupid: once I met a "designer" who was proud to say to me that he just made a 100 pages book all in Photoshop, giving to the printer 100 grayscale 300 ppi TIFF pictures!!!

And more and more (bad) printers are fed-up to deal (or are not able to deal) with the problems of PDF or native files and ask their customers to supply only 1 page JPEG pictures... but the customer doesn't know that only bad printers ask for JPEG files, and in customer's mind, the printer is THE professionnal who knows how to do the job... so if the printer asks for JPEG pictures, it means that a simple JPEG picture is enough, and it means that the job can be done with Photoshop.

Originally Posted by almaink

I tried saving it as a Photoshop PDF. I thought eps's were a dead format? I haven't saved as an eps in years now...

As I said in one of my previous post, outputting EPS (including vector data) or PDF from Photoshop are 2 suitable ways to output crisp vector text from Photoshop. But none is a better solution than the other, and problems occur with both...
The good news is that problems occurring with PDF can often be fixed using EPS, and problems occurring with EPS can often be fixed with PDF...

... but sometimes both PDF and EPS do not work properly and texts (or some texts) stay in pixel mode (because of a faux-bold for example)... I had the problem yesterday on black only text, and I finished with a 1200 ppi rasterization.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by David Kunkel

I re-read the thread and felt I should add to my earlier post:

When saved as an .EPS, Photoshop's "fill" layers with vector clipping paths seem to behave just like vector objects created in Illustrator: mathematically defined edges with mathematically defined fills. I've examined tradeshow graphic outputs where the output file's line screen was 150dpi (more is unnecessary when the output is hanging 12 feet off the floor) and through a loupe the vector objects (that used to be type) were definitely seen to be at the device's output resolution of 1200 to 2400dpi. While I've talked a lot about tradeshow artwork that's typically printed out on inkjet-like devices, I've also found these things to be true in commercial printing on standard presses.

InDesign and Illustrator also clip bitmaps with a vector edge anytime a photo appears in a frame or behind a clipping path, and the trap software seems to handle them just fine. I don't see any reason why a bitmap clipped by a vector path in Photoshop and saved as an EPS should be handled any different by the imagesetter/platesetter then a bitmap placed in Illustrator over a rich background, clipped by a vector path, and saved as an EPS--unless it's going through some process that's rasterizing the whole thing, like at the one printshop that was outputting my EPSs via Photoshop and rasterizing them at the "open" dialog!

PDFs are unreliable and I avoid them like the plague because of the way they downsample bitmaps, break transparency effects into bitmaps butted against vector art (with the occasional gap or color shift visible in output), and color manage unpredictably when their settings conflict with device settings. Like in the example above, some print vendor's output devices or workflows rasterize everything in a Photoshop native file, depending on the output workflow. I've found that EPS has always been the most reliable output for me.

Finally, a friendly comment about "stupid" designers: We go to school for four to six years to learn how to create effective design. While I had the opportunity to work in and learn from a print shop, most designers don't, and they really can't take another two to four years to learn how to be print professionals as well as designers. It's no wonder that they solve their design and output problems differently than a prepress tech or pressman would like, but we bring in the work that fills the job jackets and give the presses something to run, so roll your eyes and chuckle, and make it work! We need each other, and trust me, you wouldn't want to trade 'challenges'.

????

Boy, I'll bet there are a lot of workflow makers surprised to hear this.

This is 2010. PDF's are very reliable given a modern workflow and creating them correctly.

[WillAdams]

Claude72 wrote:
>outputting EPS (including vector data) or PDF from Photoshop are 2 suitable ways
>to output crisp vector text from Photoshop.

Except that one gets no control over overprint, and minimal over the colour model, and the ``type'' comes in as bitmap images hidden away in clipping paths so that one can't do spot colours &c.

William

[David Kunkel]

Originally Posted by Joe

????

Boy, I'll bet there are a lot of workflow makers surprised to hear this.

This is 2010. PDF's are very reliable given a modern workflow and creating them correctly.

I created a vector starburst design with an outside glow created in Photoshop's Layer Effects applied to a vector-clipped fill layer. This lays partly over a photo and partly over a grid design created in a similar fashion (circuitry over a dropshadow), and partly over a solid fill area. At the time Illustrator's controls for transparency (CS2) weren't up to the task of layering all that nice transparency and shadow, so I created it in Photoshop and it looked fantastic. I proofed it by printing it to my 600ppi PS laser printer at 4x size (composite and seps) to be sure all the vectors, shadows, and transparencies worked properly and were up to being printed at 2400ppi; the resolution was fine. I created a press-ready PDF and sent it to my printer. Long story short: the proof was hideous. In flattening, the art was ruined with bitmaps butted up to vectors, gaps between them, art cut into stripes, etc. So I sent the printer the Photoshop EPS and all those problems just disappeared. The proof was flawless and so was the final product.

So that's why I don't trust PDFs when i don't have to.