InDesign Session: 20th Oct

Today our session with Mike was a little different. Instead of him telling us things we need to know in regards to software, we took part in a little task. We were asked to open an In Design document and try to identify eight different problems within it. The task proved challenging but once I got going things started to become obvious. To the left is a scan from my notebook from where I noted things down and below are screen shots from the document identifying specifically where the problems lie. Each screen shot has a brief description of the intentional mistake and in some cases how these problems can be rectified with no further issues.

Mistake one was that the yellow background did not reach all the way to the red 'bleed line' around the document. This is easily solved by enlarging it until it fits nicely. If this is not done then the yellow will not go all the way to the edge of the page and the desired effect will not be achieved.

The second mistake was that a colour in the swatch palette was actually created in RGB mode rather than CMYK. This could be a problem when coming to print as the desired colour may not appear on the print out. It is solved by double clicking the colour and simple changing to CMYK.

The third problem was associated with the image links. The shot below shows the obvious red question mark next to the image in question. This problem cannot be solved as it indicates the linked image has disappeared.

Fourthly was the use of 'registration' colouring for the small print on the back. It may not seem that big of an issue, however when printing 'registration' a hundred per cent of each individual colour is used, resulting in far too much ink coverage. This can be solved by simply changing the colour to black.

The fifth, six and seventh problems were associated with the images used. Problem five was that the resolution for one image was 72 rather than 300. This results in very poor image quality both on screen and printed out. To solve this problem click edit image and the original source should open in photoshop. However once opened it is not recommended to increase the resolution as it doesn't really fix the problem. The only way to fix it is to find the image again.

The next problem is the 'effective PPI' of the image. As you can see below it is far too large in this circumstance and is solely to do with the scale. To rectify the problem open the image in photoshop and scale it down within that programme. Otherwise InDesign is working far to hard to scale it down and may be prone to crashing.

Also in the case below another common mistake is saving your image in RGB mode rather than the appropriate CMYK. Again to solve this revert back to photoshop and ensure that it is saved in the right colour mode.

The last problem identified was the use of too many inks. This would be a five colour print job however there were seven within the swatch. Through using the 'separations preview' tool it is possible to discover which colours have not been used and can therefore be deleted.

At the end of the session we ran through the errors and were congratulated on successfully completing the task. However, we where then told a much quicker way of identifying issues that we may have neglected. In the file menu if you click 'package' the box below will appear and by reviewing the sub headings on the left it is much easier to create a perfect document.