Commercial Printer Recommendations?

I hope this is not an inappropriate question for this forum. I apologize in advance if it is (and if so, and an administrator is welcome to remove this post).
I need to send (8) 8.5X11 final trim, 4/4 brochures to an offset printing press. There will be Four 4-pagers and Four 8-pagers. I'll also want full flood aqueous coating. I plan on placing all 8 jobs with a single commercial printer at the same time, so a large format press is probably the way to go. This ought to help keep setup costs lower by combining jobs, where possible. My customer is located in the Baltimore area, though the printer doesn't need to be, but I'd prefer somebody reasonably close to keep transportation reasonable and quick. The client only wants 1000 each (8000 brochures total).
My client is VERY cost conscious (pronounced CHEAP), so I am looking for a printer who is very competitive, but one with good quality and good control over color. I'm not located in that area, so I could use some guidance.If they implement a full color managed workflow, all the better, but it's not absolutely necessary.
I've tried a few low cost, online "gang printers" before, but I wasn't overly thrilled with the results or the ability to converse with the right people (or get the right information).
If anybody can offer some recommendations that fit the above, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks,
Lou

Thanks, Peter…you forgot "hungry", which many printers are these days, but your point is well taken. For this job, I'll sacrifice a little service and speed for quality and price.
I'd be interested in knowing who your printer is for possible future projects where I am not working for Ebenezer Scrooge.

Similar Messages

Need advice on Pages for commercially printed publications.

Here is my situation. I have created a publication (a buy/sell classified magazine) using Pages.
Pages was recommended to me as opposed to Indesign or Quark as it has some great placeholder options for text and photos and would set up nicely as an easy template. So I spent 100s of hours setting up this document and getting it perfect and then off to the printer we go!
Firstly I should mention we are using cold set printing for those who are familiar with it... anyhoo... publication came back with VERY dark photos and even the text was not crisp.
Has anyone had cold set printing done from a publication or document done in Pages? Is the problem with the conversion to PDF? Any suggestions to fix the problem? Is lightening the pictures significantly going to work?
Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Have you asked your printer about how they handle PDFs? Or, for that matter, what they thought went wrong with the file you sent them? As far as I know, there is nothing special about the PDF output of Pages, and any printer that can utilize PDFs properly should be able to use Pages output (at least as far as the text is concerned -- images may very well take some tweaking). This sounds like a matter you should address directly with your printer -- if they are any good, they should be willing to discuss this with you.
For the most part the commercial printing we've done from Pages was for digitally printed jobs, since we generally don't do large runs (1000+), but I have never had any problem with our printer services handling the PDF or producing less than acceptable results.
PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Commercial printing of pictures processed with Aperture

I first processed my pictures with Iphoto, and now Aperture 2.1.1. - when my pictures are ready for printing, I transfer them to a folder on my desktop, burn a CD or a DVD depending on how many I have and take them to a photo processing place to have them printed (I have tried kodak, and Fuji). My pictures always come back several shades darker than what I see on my LCD screen (please don't tell me that I have to adjust the color on my screen)
I used to have the same problem with my home printer and after reading several forum recommendations I resolved this issue by selecting the "colorsync profile" of my printer in Aperture, and setting the "color handling profile" in photoshop Elements to "printer manages color".
Do you have any suggestions of what can be done to obtain correctly exposed Aperture prints from a commercial printer ( After getting some very awful prints, I now specify that prints modified in Aperture be printed as they are). I suspect that this problem has to do with different colorsync profiles but, I do not know how to resolve it and it is getting quite expensive and time consuming to print hundreds of pictures at home. Your suggestions will be appreciated.

A few different things to try. Once you use the
Print command (Command+P) hit the "Printer Settings"
button. Chose your printer and in the third drop
down (the one under "presets" make sure that you turn
colour management off. For my printer, (Epson) there
is an option labelled just that - it may be different
for others, but check every box.
Yes, I have done that. The choice in my case is labeled 'Application managed',
meaning color profile is managed by Aperture, and not by the printer color
profile. It does not produce any significant improvement.
Once that's been done, back to the Aperture print
dialogue and press "ColorSync Profile" Chose the
paper type that matches what's in the printer from
the "Output Type" selection. Then print and see if
that's any better.
Again, I found this in the Aperture print dialogue. I selected
the printer/paper type, "HP PS ... C7100 - Premium Paper".
No significant improvement, sorry to say.
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Printer RECOMMENDATIONS/Suggestions

I would love one or all of your wireless printer recommendations.
I had an HP and it wasn't great. Now I have a Cannon PIXMA and the colors are pale and can't scan wirelessly and just doesn't interact well with the Mac.
What are your best suggestions for a wireless all-in-one printer?

I've had good luck with my Epson Artisan 810.

Color assistance needed for commercial printer

Hi there,
We're a board game publisher about to send our first game to an overseas manufacturer. The game is composed of hundreds of cards with detailed, fantasy art, and we're excited to get this game finally out the door.
We sent the raw, packaged indesign (CS6) files to a local printer to see how everything would look before we have 3,000 copies of the game made overseas. The local printer used the same process that the overseas printer will, a 4 color high-end printer that is certainly impressive to people new to the industry such as ourselves. The sample cards they printed came out with fantastic clarity, but the colors are very muted. It's not a subtle change in color like I might see when toggling RGB to CMYK in photoshop for example. Instead, the colors on the print out look like someone slid a color saturation slider on the entire indesign file down by 25%.
When we print on our low-end inket at the office, the resolution is obviously poor, but the colors look great and match our calibrated monitors. When we export to PDF using "Press Quality", everything looks perfect on multiple computers here and at other locations away from the office. It's only the most important step, printing on a full-blown, commercial printer that the colors look so muted.
Here are some crude photos I took on my phone to help show the difference.
These photos have our office, inkjet printer cards are more colorful and the high-quality commercial printer cards are muted (sorry for the strange alignment, this forum is rotating the images for some reason):
http://www.watchtowergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/photo-1.jpg
http://www.watchtowergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/photo-2.jpg
http://www.watchtowergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/photo-3.jpg
Different cards here:
http://www.watchtowergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/photo-1b.jpg
http://www.watchtowergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/photo-2b.jpg
I've researched about swatches and color profiles, but all my experimenting hasn't produced any difference on my end. Therein lies the challenge, as I cannot duplicate the problem here at the office. The colors look great in indesign, great in exported PDFs, and great on our inkjet printed cards. Only when we pay a decent amount of money to the local commercial printer do we get these muted colors in our samples. And the local printer says their setup is exactly the same as our overseas manufacturer, which is terrifying. We've spent 17 months agonizing over all the details of the look of our cards for aesthetic purposes and game play so that players can quickly identify each card type by color. These muted colors will really mess the game up. We're pulling our hair out over here.
The local printer has offered to provide a color correction service for us, but at $100 an hour, that sounds like a lot for a new business like ours.
Is there some setting inside indesign that we are missing? Is there a way to replicate the muted colors on our end so we can at least troubleshoot this? Is there a method to turn up the saturation, if you will, for 4 color printing? Should we bite the bullet and pay the local printer an arm and a leg to color correct this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Tom
P.S. Also, if it helps, when we had the local printer digitally print a sample, everything looked far too dark, which they said was a side effect of the digital print process.

Thanks for the response, Rob.
We talked with a local printer as they assured us that their setup was the same standard that the overseas printer uses. They said the sample sheet they printed for us had marks on the edges. Supposedly, once we had everything matching up right with the local printer, we could mail the printed sheet here to the overseas printer and their system would put in the sheet with its colors on the edges and know exactly what we wanted. Heck, if I know. I'm picking this up as I go along.
By your post, it sounds like we have introduced an unnecessary variable (this local printer) and should just cut them out of the process and deal directly with the overseas printer. The challenge is that the next step is for them to make a sample game for us, and at $1,000 a sample game, it's going to get crazy expensive if we have to go through several samples. I'll see if they can just run a single sheet of cards as a test run like you suggested.
If the overseas printer sheet or sample game comes up with the muted color problem still, what steps happen next. I ask because I'm used to solving the issues and don't understand how to solve this one if it comes up again. Do I just tell them to "make it more vibrant" and they work their magic as professional printers, or is the expectation that I'm to go through each of our many illustrations and graphic designs and over-saturate them myself? I suppose we can cross that bridge when we get to it. It's just hard to work for 18 months on this game getting everything just right and now see this color issue that is out my hands that I cannot solve.
For color space, I think I understand you. Most of our art is RGB.Our Proof Setup is "CMYK - US SWOP v2".
Thanks again for the information.
Tom

Using Commercial Printer Profiles in LR4

this question might belong in the color management section, but since it deals with Lightroom I'll post it here.
I am having trouble using commercial printer profiles in LR4. I import all images as RAW files from the camera, and save them as DNG files when done editing. Generally, the printing services I use want to see JPG files, and I am unsure how and when to apply the printer profiles as I move from a DNG to a JPG, in preparation for sending the job to the printer.
I'm sure the good folks ad Adobe have thought this through, but I'm stuck.
Thanks!
Jeff Zens
Salem, OR.

I called back and spoke to a manager who let me know that the profiles are, in fact, RGB profiles. So I believe that I should be able to print to JPEG rather than an attached printer, so long as I have the correct printer/paper combination selected in the print dialog. Do I have this right?
Thanks....
Jeff

Use Pages for template to commercial printer

I created a 20 page, 7x7", perfect bound book in Blurb.com which is primarily pictures with a small amount of text. It has generated a lot of interest since it is very specific to the area in which I live. A local business wants to stock it and claims it can sell "tons" which is appealing. The problem I have is getting the unit price down to a reasonable amount. Even buying in bulk from Blurb I am paying about $8 a unit. I'm exploring commercial printers and if the pricing seems reasonable I will need to transfer the book to a non-proprietary software. Pages is an obvious contender but I'm wondering if folks can share their experiences using Pages for this type of project. I have Photoshop Elements but that seems cumbersome.
Any comments are appreciated. Thanks.

To print your book commercially you will need to reproduce the color faithfully and with all bitmap elements at 300dpi.
Frankly that is difficult to do from Pages which is designed to print to a users' desktop printers and renders certain parts of the output at 72dpi when exported to pdf which is the usual format for commercial printers.
1. See if you can find a commercial printer who will accept a Pages file to run through their RIP directly
2. Always talk to your printer about what they require and what is achievable
3. Commercial offset works off a different price structure than digital printing. Much of the cost is up front and the greater the print run the more the price comes down. Find out how many books you'll have to print before you beat the $8 you have been quoted by blurb.
4. As compensation commercial offset, when done correctly, is markedly better quality than digital
5. Please please please don't use Photoshop Elements or Photoshop they are not DTP software and rendering all your vector objects and text as bitmaps is such a bad idea that of course everyone is doing it now
Peter

Color Settings CS3 Mac for CMYK Commercial Print

Can somebody advise me as too what I should be setting my color settings to so they will be the same across the suite and when I send my files to commercial print that prints CMYK sheet fed coated.
I've read so much I'm confused. I'm new to CS3 and the Mac ... In the past my work has come back perfect in color and matched to my monitor. Now on CS3 on the Mac I'm not sure what to do.
If anyone can help it would be most appreciated.

Charlene wrote:
> Marco ... I read your post on rGB / CMYK conversion
Which one was that, if you could remind me?
>I work through a print broker that prints CMYK and the only thing he can tell me is that they print CMYK and on sheet fed coated.
Well, yes, print is always CMYK. As for "sheetfed coated", I would assume that they intend a color space like the one described by the U.S. Sheetfed Coated v2 profile (though it could possibly be the GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 profile). You may want to ask them to confirm one or the other, to be safer.
>So my question is di turn everything to CMYK on my monitor and change to sheet fed coated in the settings?
To make sure I understand your question, I think you are asking me whether you should turn your image file(s) to a chosen CMYK output profile. Yes and no. You should do your color and tonal correction work
b in RGB
, and convert to the intended CMYK output profile
b only as a last step
, just before you deliver the files to the print provider or the prepress specialists.
Do
b not
convert your files to the intended CMYK output profile in the beginning and correct them in CMYK. Do not do that. That is not the most desirable way to work.
The default working spaces in Photoshop's Color Settings are important, but not essential. Yes, you should set the default RGB profile to AdobeRGB (if not ProPhoto RGB, though you may wish to hold off on that one until you have more experience with the application), and the CMYK default profile to U.S. Sheetfed Coated v2.
But, as long as your chosen color management policies are to "Preserve Embedded Profiles", and as long as the image files you work on are tagged with the appropriate profile, then the default profile in Color Settings is no longer relevant.

Fonts appear in color when emailing to a commercial printer

I prepared a newsletter in Pages'09 with color photographs. I sent it as a PDF file to a commercial printer for printing hardcopy. I never changed the default on the text. Below is the response I received from the commercial printer.
When I open the file and convert it to cymk, the type is in 4 color also. See in your file if you can color all they type black only. In most programs on PC's the default black is in a combination of color.
You might have to make a new spot color black so that the type will separate as black only on my side.
Is there an easy way to make this fix???

Hi emquad46
Welcome to the forum.
+Menu > View > Show Colors > click on 2nd tab (sliders) > Grey Scale Slider > left most swatch is 100% black > drag that down to the samples grid below+
Click in the text and *Select All* +(command a),+ then click on the black swatch.
Resave any Styles you have used to make sure this is now the default color.
Pages is not ideal for commercial printing as you have found out. Too much of this is manual and/or hidden from you.
Peter

Why would a commercial printer ask for Illustrator native files instead of InDesign files?

Why would a commercial printer ask for Illustrator native files instead of InDesign files?
For example, We create 32 hang tags for the same brand. Each hang tag looks identical except for a color bar calling out the different fits. We set the files up in InDesign with a Master Page congaing all the similar artwork. This process saves us a lot of time when making changes to the entire package of hang tags. So my question is... why can't the printer use InDesign. They are saying they convert our InDesign files to Illustrator before printing.

A printer who insists on native files but can't take InDesign is not properly equipped. It suggests they haven't updated their capabilities in 15 years.

I am sending a single-page poster in Illustrator to a commercial printer. There are several placed graphics and I want to choose the correct file-type to keep my Illustrator file nice and small.

I am sending a single-page poster in Illustrator to a commercial printer. There are several placed graphics and I want to choose the correct file-type to keep my Illustrator file nice and small.

Printers like PDFs, but you should consult with the print vendor before you save the file in any particular format. Each vendor is different and have an established workflow. They may not accept JPGs. If the poster prints offset, you will need to supply the appropriate resolution per their request or what they require. If the poster is large format or grand format, then they will or should know what resolution is appropriate. However, large format inkjet only requires 144-150ppi at 100% final size. Try to get in the habit of consulting with the print vendor early on so you end up supplying what is needed.

Commercial printing a Pages document

I think Pages is a great piece of software. Creating great looking brochures, newsletters is not a problem. My question is - what file type would a commercial printer require? Is PDF sufficient? Is the export to PDF command the same as creating a PDF through the print dialogue box?

Hello Gary
I'm not sure what you mean by '…build from a 4 page…', can you elaborate?
It might be worth asking your customer to try PDF-X. To do this she needs to use the PDF button in her print dialog box and select Save As PDF-X ...
I'm certainly no expert in this area but I understand that PDF-X is an ISO defined subset of the PDF standard specifically designed to eliminate compatibility issues. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF-X). I've also read that some people have had success using this to overcome compatibility issues on pdfs with the online publisher Lulu (although I've not seen much confirmation of the latter).
Good luck
Ian

Using system fonts for commercial printing?

Hi,
Does anyone know the licensing rights/usage for using system fonts for commercial printing? If I understand correctly, system fonts that comes from operating system CAN be use because Apple purchase the rights on them and end users that purchase OS can use these fonts freely as long as not we are not redistributing them for profit, etc.
Can anyone point me in the right direction with official documentation on the subject?
Thanks!

Never mind, I found the answer. It's in Apple's OS EULA.
"E. Fonts. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use the fonts included
with the Apple Software to display and print content while running the Apple Software; however,
you may only embed fonts in content if that is permitted by the embedding restrictions
accompanying the font in question. These embedding restrictions can be found in the Font
Book/Preview/Show Font Info panel."

FTP Uploads to Commercial Printer Site?

I'm building a website for a commercial printer. The printer
wants to allow clients to FTP files to him for printing. I'm trying
to decide on the best way to do this.
Some questions, thinking both about security and ease of use:
- Should clients upload to a "communal" FTP area?
- Could this be done without using a password?
- Or should clients have to register to create an individual
account? How would this be done?
Thanks for any ideas.

> Some questions, thinking both about security and ease of
use:
>
> - Should clients upload to a "communal" FTP area?
> - Could this be done without using a password?
> - Or should clients have to register to create an
individual account? How
> would this be done?
A common solution (from printers I've worked with) is to have
a 'drop box'
FTP site for incoming jobs. You should still set it up so
each person has an
account (a server admin would have to create those as
requested) and then
the rights would WRITE but not READ (so they could write to
the folder, but
not see everyone else's folder).
Another option would be to create unique accounts for each
client. Either
way, it really isn't a web developer's issue...but rather
whoever will end
up being the server administrator.
-Darrel

WPS Printer Recommendations

We recently purchased an HP LJ m451nw printer and have failed to get it paired correctly with our Airport Extreme WIFI network (latest firmware). The problem is apparently with HP firmware. That's a long and unrelated frustrating story.
My question is what WIFI printer recommendations have folks had success with, on a similar config?
The problems I'm trying to solve:
* Make the WIFI printer available to everyone on the Airport Extreme network
* Also, have the printer use both network connections (LAN and WIFI, something HP cannot do)
I probably should have inquired here first. :-)
The environment is a medium-sized office, so that would be factored in the size and quality of printer. B&W only is fine, too -- ours just happens to be color.
Thank you in advance.

When you use HP stuff.. in a network.. WPS can be a problem.. but on the apple WPS system did you try first attempt not pin.. apparently most HP will not work with pin.
I have good reports of Brother.. I personally still use the older series HP with EIO slots.. Or MIO I think they became.. Sometimes old printers are better than new ones.
Ethernet or wireless will make no difference.. it is a network printer.. once on the network it should be accessible to every computer.. BUT airprint only works to wireless.. so that is the more important one.
As a work around.. there is nothing wrong with buying a cheap little TP-Link (or any of the china brands) N lite routers.. $30 or so.. and use it as AP on the network for the HP in particular or any PC .. that will still allow it to be used by any device on the network and even airprint should work.

Commercial Printer Recommendations?

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