Registration

So just a quick post today on what the term Registration means in the world of print.

Registration in its simplest form is the method of correlating overlapping colours on a single image. When printing an image with more than one colour (depending on the method of printing) each colour is placed onto the sheet at separate points. To make sure each of these colours are applied in exactly the right spot we use a method of alignment to keep consistent registration.

If you take a look at a press sheet - you'll notice various markings on them that won't necessarily on your artwork.

 

You may wonder how we're able to measure alignment from one colour? - Well Registration as well as being a method of checking alignment of colours - is actually what we call the above colour which is actually made up of 100% of each of the colours (CMYK). From this - you'll see any slight movement between any of the printing plates.

Resolution

This one always seems to have the last thought when producing print. It's most likely down to the computers we work on as to why it's sometimes forgetton. Resolution is a very important part of printing and without a hi res image or text sometimes your item will look pixelated or fuzzy.

Such a Creep...

... If the title had you wondering, then don't worry - this Blog post is all about a print term called 'creep' or push out or shingling or even feathering.

If you're not sure what creep is then i'll try and explain that first. Imaging you're printing a stitched brochure - a reasonable amount of pages and can be any size. Now this part you can do on your own. Grab a handful of paper (i'd say over 20 sheets so it's exaggerated), now just bend them in half like you're about to fold them... do you see the movement of the middle pages..? They all start to extend past the first piece of paper to the thickness of all the sheets you have.. That's creep.

Now imagine you have artwork on all those sheets that have been set up with the same guides as the first sheet! You'll end up having parts of the artwork chopped off. This doesn't really happen until you're at least 48 pages in on around 100gsm paper. There are various ways to prepare for creep - printers can have automated processes involved in their prepress to crop for the page creep or you can adjust the pages yourself. It's always best for this to be accounted for at the design stage so that everything is within your control. If you're creating a brochure and you're not sure about creep - then always ask for a paper dummy from your printer - this will be an exact reproduction of your final brochure and you'll be able to account for the amount of creep needed per page.