Mythbusting! (A bit of fun)

[William Taylor]

Does anyone out there have any printing myths or ridiculous "old wives tales" regarding printing that you have heard people say. You know, things that are completely untrue.
For example..I guy I used to work with suggested that if you were struggling to mix ink to match then add a bit of silver to it! Same guy suggested peeing in the ink to reduce it! Funny thing is he wasn't joking either!!!!
So you get what I mean.
I may write an article for my print blog about it so lets hear your classics!

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Higher resolution = higher quality printing

"I can't email the file (a 4"x4" BW advertisement). It says it's too big. Can I send it to you on a DVD? It's about 1.2 Gigabyte."

 

[jetzerm]

You can't use JPEG compression for images.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

Does anyone out there have any printing myths or ridiculous "old wives tales" regarding printing that you have heard people say. You know, things that are completely untrue.
For example..I guy I used to work with suggested that if you were struggling to mix ink to match then add a bit of silver to it! Same guy suggested peeing in the ink to reduce it! Funny thing is he wasn't joking either!!!!
So you get what I mean.
I may write an article for my print blog about it so lets hear your classics!

Unfortunately a lot of print process knowledge is myth and it is not too funny.

One only knows that something is a myth when it is finally proven to be a myth.

 

[GuruMorgor]

"I am a poure dyuel, and my name ys Tytyvyllus ... I muste eche day ... brynge my master a thousande pokes full of faylynges, and of neglygences in syllables and wordes."

Yup, good old Titi, he'd be a myth I suppose. His job is waaaay easier now

 

[Deleted member 16349]

"I am a poure dyuel, and my name ys Tytyvyllus ... I muste eche day ... brynge my master a thousande pokes full of faylynges, and of neglygences in syllables and wordes."

Yup, good old Titi, he'd be a myth I suppose. His job is waaaay easier now

As they say, "the demon is in the details".

 

[John Clifford]

You can't use JPEG compression for images.

While you certainly CAN use jpeg compression for images (that's what it's for--Joint PHOTOGRAPHIC Engineering Group), the use of jpeg for print should be used with caution. It's a lossy compression which means that each time you compress it, you lose some of the quality data. AND you certainly don't want to use a high compression as the data loss can get pretty extreme.

You can also print 72 ppi images, but do you really want to?

 

[Dottiek]

Looking for a source for Instant Re-focusing Software for images. Please send details-- desperately needed for blurry pictures in job due Tuesday!

 

[michaelejahn]

You can also print 72 ppi images, but do you really want to?

Yes, indeed you can and often should. I have been capturing screen shots of software to be placed as is at 100% into manuals since 1996. No need to up sample, as they print just fine as they are.

 

[MacTwidget]

Yes, indeed you can and often should. I have been capturing screen shots of software to be placed as is at 100% into manuals since 1996. No need to up sample, as they print just fine as they are.

That's because when you place the screen captures at 100%, there is no pixel dithering of the image.

 

[rich apollo]

Hmm. Where did we stash that paper stretcher?

Oh, and it looks like somebody dropped some dots over there by the plate processor.

 

[Topher]

When OS X was in it's infancy, our Prepress Department got in 2 pallets of brand spankin new Macs. Everyone was excited to have iTunes on their machine, but the "End User Support Dept" made the announcement that they would be removing iTunes from all the machines because, "You cannot have iTunes running when you generate postscript, because it will create buggy files".
This was in a very large, very predominant printing company.

 

[MailGuru]

"It's only 200,000 pcs, and, we gave you the art and the data at 10:00 am this morning. Why can't it go to the Post Office this afternoon?"

 

[maas]

Not so much a quote but I worked in a large printing plant and back in the 80's we had a wet etching department using cyanide baths to etch film, an old crusty Yorkshire man was in charge, he would happily rock his cyanide bath back and forth to agitate the mixture while taking bites out of his sandwich which he would place unwrapped on the shelf above, this shelf had never seen a cleaning cloth and was encrusted with god only knows what, this was also in the day before smoking was banned and in our scanning department the drums of the Crossfiled were cleaned with Arklone P by an operator who had a cigarette permanently attached to his lips, even when hunched over the cleaning table dousing those perpex drums with the solvent

 

[Amer]

While you certainly CAN use jpeg compression for images (that's what it's for--Joint PHOTOGRAPHIC Engineering Group), the use of jpeg for print should be used with caution. It's a lossy compression which means that each time you compress it, you lose some of the quality data. AND you certainly don't want to use a high compression as the data loss can get pretty extreme.

You can also print 72 ppi images, but do you really want to?

Didn't Gordo have a thread a while back where he proved that quality loss with resaving as JPEG was negligible?

 

[gordo]

Didn't Gordo have a thread a while back where he proved that quality loss with resaving as JPEG was negligible?

It was a posting on my blog: The Print Guide: JPEG images for print production - the facts

best, gordo

 

[Dottiek]

Didn't Gordo have a thread a while back where he proved that quality loss with resaving as JPEG was negligible?

I have had 2 cases in the past month where school logo jpegs have degraded over 4-5 years from resaves. It was gradual so they never noticed in the office. I see it only yearly when they send me a file so the fuzziness jumps out. In both cases, I dug up the oldest jpeg I could find and resaved as a png. Not perfection, but so much better than what they had.
School logos and colors ( what do you mean, what color green is it?)... gotta love them.

 

[Possumgal]

Looking for a source for Instant Re-focusing Software for images. Please send details-- desperately needed for blurry pictures in job due Tuesday!

Use Photoshop CSI. They can sharpen a license plate from three miles away on TV!

 

[jetzerm]

"I used Quark Xpress 3.+, so I don't have to pay trapping charges."

 

[dabob]

And where did we put that edge gluer?????