Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Recap: Stress-Free Printing Tips

Congratulations! You’ve just waded through a ton of dense information. Some of it you’ll remember and some of it you won’t, but, no matter what, it’s here whenever you need it. To recap, here are some of the most important tips:

• Communicate with your printing company. At the beginning of your project, find out exactly which file format and settings the company wants. Knowing this info ahead of time can help keep your project from going past its deadline and over its budget.

• Calibrate your monitor with an external calibration tool. This is the only way to accurately view and proof images onscreen.

• Before you print, resize images to the print dimensions. This ensures that the image will print at the size you want, with no unexpected cropping. Besides, physically smaller images print faster.

• Make sure your image has enough resolution. After resizing the image, check that its resolution is between 240 and 300 ppi so it will produce a high-quality print.

• If you’ve made the image substantially smaller, sharpen it. Any time you change the number of pixels in an image, it gets softened (blurred) a bit. A final round of sharpening (see Chapter 11) can help you get some focus back.

• Save editable PSD files. Saving your Photoshop document in its native format lets you go back and edit its layers, alpha channels, and so on. When you’re creating a version for printing (described in the next bullet), duplicate the file or use File→Save As to make a copy so you don’t ...