Adobe Indesign CS3 – Spot-Color Trapping

It’s more important to trap abutting color fields in publications you ‘re printing using spot colors than it is in process color publications. When you ‘re working with process colors, you’ll almost always see some ink between abutting objects, so you’re less likely to see paper-colored gaps showing a poor trap.

The easiest way to demonstrate how spot-color trapping works is to show you some examples.As you work through these examples, you’ll trap an ellipse into a rectangle by manipulating the color, width, and overprinting specifications of the path that surrounds the ellipse.First,draw the colored objects.

1. Create a rectangle. Fill the rectangle with a spot color (“Color 1″).Set the rectangle’s stroke color to None.
2. Draw an ellipse on top of the rectangle. Make sure that the ellipse is entirely inside the rectangle.Fil l the ellipse with a dif ferent color from that of the rectangle (“Color 2″). Set the stroke of the ellipse to None.
3. Save the file.

The ellipse needs to be trapped, or you’ll run the risk of having paper-colored lines appear up around the ellipse when you print the publication. You can either spread or choke the ellipse,or both.

To spread the ellipse, follow these steps:

1. Select the ellipse.
2. F10 to display the Stroke palette.
3. Choose Weight Changes Bounding Box from the Stroke palette menu, then enter a new line width in the Weight field.

The line width you enter in the Weight field should be equal to twice the trap amount – if you enter “2″, you’ll get a stroke of one point on either side of the path. If your commercial printer has asked for a trap of .5 points, enter “1″ in the Weight field.

When you print, the ellipse is larger than the hole that’s been knocked out of the background rectangle, which means that the outside of the ellipse slightly overprints the background rectangle. You’ve just created a spread.

After you’re through looking at the objects, or printing, choose Revert from the File menu and revert to the version of the file you saved earlier. This way, you’re ready for the next procedure.

To choke the ellipse, follow these steps:

1. Select the ellipse.
2. F10 to display the Stroke palette. Make sure that Weight Changes Bounding Box option on the Stroke palette menu is turned on, then enter a new stroke width in the Weight field.
3. In the Stroke Inspector, choose Basic from the Stroke Type pop-up menu,set the line color to “Color 1″ (the color of the background rectangle), type a line width for your trap in the Weight field. Finally, turn on the Overprint option in the Attributes palette.

When you print, the hole that’s knocked out of the background rectangle is slightly smaller than the ellipse. This way, the outside of the ellipse slightly overprints the background rectangle. You’ve just created a choke.

Choose Revert from the File menu to get the file ready for the next procedure.

Adobe Indesign CS3 – Manual Trapping

A “trap” is a method of overlapping abutting colored objects to compensate for the imperfect registration of printing presses. Because registration, even on good presses with good operators, can be off by a quarter point or more,abutting elements in your publication may not end up abutting perfectly when the publication is printed by your commercial printer.

If you can’t (or don’t want to) use InDesign’s automatic trapping methods (In-RIP or built-in),you can still trap your publication – you’ll just have to do it yourself. I’ll describe the process, because I believe that you should know how to add and subtract, multiply and divide before you ever use a calculator.

Before I start describing manual trapping techniques, however, I need to state that InDesign’s automatic trapping methods can trap your publications better than you can (assuming that you have both deadlines and a finite amount of patience), and if you use them, you usually won’t even have to think about trapping.

Object-Level Overprinting. The key to trapping,in InDesign and elsewhere,is in control ling which objects – or which parts of objects – print on top of other objects as the printing press prints your publication. The only way to make manual trapping work is to control the overprinting characteristics of individual objects.

Luckily, you can. Any InDesign path can be specified as an over-printing object (that is, it won’t knock a hole in any objects behind it when you print), regardless of the object’s color. The controls for object-level overprinting are the Overprint Fill and Overprint Stroke options found in the Attributes palette. These controls, used in combination with InDesign’s Paste Into command, can be used to create virtually any trap.

Attributes palette

I have to stress the importance of the Weight Changes Bounding Box option on the Stroke palette menu. You cannot create traps when this option is turned off,so you ‘l l have to make sure it’s turned on as you follow any of the procedures in this section.

When you’re working with trapping, you’ll be creating spreads (outlines of objects, in the same color as the object,that are slightly larger than the object itself) and chokes (outlines of the object that are the same color as the underlying object’s color). Spreads make the object larger so that the edges of the object print over the underlying object; chokes make the area knocked out of the underlying object smaller than the outline of the foreground object.

Use chokes when the foreground object is a darker color than the background object; use spreads when the foreground object is lighter. In other words, trap from light colors into darker colors. Sound subjective? It is. I use chokes when I’m trapping type-text characters of ten look distorted when you use spreads (the eye is very critical when it comes to text).

Adobe Indesign CS3 – Drawing a new graphics frame

Until now, you’ve used only frames prepared for you for this lesson. Now it’s time to create a frame on your own, using the Drawing tools in the toolbox.

1. In the toolbox, hold down the mouse on the Rectangle tool until you see other options, and select the Polygon tool.
2. Double-click the Polygon tool to open the Polygon Settings dialog box, and specify the following: For Number of Sides, type 4. Type 20% for Star Inset and then click OK.
3. Hold down the Shift key and drag to draw a four-pointed star that is 12p x 12p. Use the H and W values in either the Control or Transform palette as a reference as you draw the star. If you have difficulty getting the values exactly at 12 picas, leave the star selected, type the values in the W and H boxes of the Control or Transform palette, and press Enter or Return.
4. Press V to switch to the Selection tool and then drag the new star into position in the purple background on page 5, so that it is slightly off center and entirely within the purple background image. Leave the star selected.
5. Make sure that the Fill box is selected in the toolbox.
6. Click the Swatches palette tab (or choose Window > Swatches) and select the color named C=0, M=28, Y=100, K=0 to fill the star with a mustard yellow color.
7. In the toolbox, select the Stroke box and then click the Apply None button to remove the black stroke color.

Adobe Indesign CS3 – Using the Position tool

The Position tool allows you to manipulate a frame’s graphic content and the frame itself using one tool. You would typically use the Direct Selection tool in order to move a graphic within a graphics frame. You could then manipulate the position of the frame by switching to the Selection tool and moving the frame to its new position. The Position tool now allows you to perform either task without switching between two tools. The Direct Selection tool can still be used to select and modify individual points of frames.

1. Choose Edit > Deselect All.
2. Using the Direct Selection tool, click onto the edge of a graphics frame.
3. Click onto the topmost point of the triangle and drag down to match the shape of the graphic.
4. Repeat step 2 with the two remaining points of the triangle frame, cropping the graphic to reveal only the origami shape.
5. Select the Position tool in the toolbox by clicking and holding on the Direct Selection tool.
6. Click into the graphic. Notice that your cursor changes into the Hand tool when you put your cursor over the graphic contents of the frame.
7. Position your cursor just over the edge of the origami art, noticing that your cursor changes to a triangle with a dot. This indicates that you will be selecting a frame if clicked. Click on the frame and drag it to the left-hand side of the page so that its center point aligns with the margin of the first column.

The Position tool can be used to manipulate content or a frame without switching tools.

Adobe Indesign CS3 – Duplicating a frame and its contents

Adobe Photoshop CS5
Using the familiar copy-and-paste technique, you can quickly duplicate objects in your design. In this procedure, you’ll also use a keyboard shortcut to duplicate and move an object in one action.

1. Using the Selection tool, select the crane graphic, and choose Edit > Copy.
2. Choose Edit > Paste. A duplicate of the crane and its frame appears in the center of the window.
3. Drag the new crane graphic up into the purple background area on page 4so that the lower edge snaps into position with the guide at 22 picas on the vertical ruler.
4. Choose View > Fit Spread in Window.
5. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and drag the crane graphic to page 5. When you release the mouse, you’ll see that by using the Alt or Option key, you have moved a new copy of the graphic, as the original remains in place.
6. With the crane graphic selected on page 5, hold down the Shift key and click the crane on page 4. Turn off the text wrap option for both these graphics by selecting the No text wrap button in the Text Wrap palette.
7. Choose Edit > Deselect All.