Colour and print

Screen and print templates

A template is made for the screen or for print (print output). A screen template’s documents are RGB, as screens are. A print template’s are made for a press: they carry a bleed, printer marks if asked for, and the printing condition they are made for.

Colours

A colour is one of three kinds:

• RGB (#rrggbb): red, green and blue light, the screen’s colours.
• CMYK: amounts of the four process inks, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, in percent.
• Spot: an ink of its own, mixed before printing (a brand red, a metallic), printed on a plate of its own. Each spot has a CMYK alternate, used to show it on screen and when it is printed as process colours instead.

Swatches name the colours a template uses, so a brand colour is defined once.

Profiles and printing conditions

The same CMYK numbers print differently on coated and uncoated paper, on one press and another. A colour profile describes a printing condition: what each ink amount looks like there. Paprika uses profiles both ways:

• To show CMYK and spot colours on screen as they will print, through the template’s printing condition (Paprika bundles FOGRA39, a common condition for coated paper in Europe, and takes your printer’s own profile).
• To tag RGB content in print files: RGB colours and images stay RGB, described by their profile, and the printer’s software converts them for the press it runs. Exactly black (#000000) is written as 100 % black ink, as printers expect for text.

The editor can proof print colours: show RGB colours and images as they will print too, so a colour that can’t be printed shows before the press does.

Overprint

A colour can be set to overprint: printed over the colours under it rather than knocking them out, as black text usually is. Paprika writes overprint into print files; the editor doesn’t simulate it on screen.

PDF/X-4

PDF/X-4 is the standard for print-ready PDF files: everything needed to print is in the file (fonts, images, the printing condition’s profile), the page boxes say where to trim and how far the bleed goes, and nothing a press can’t handle is there.

Every print file Paprika makes is checked against PDF/X-4’s rules by Paprika’s own preflight before it claims to be one. A file that fails is still made, without the claim, and the editor lists the rules it failed. Paprika’s preflight is calibrated on the industry’s reference test files, but it is Paprika’s own: it isn’t an independent certification. For a job where that matters, run your printer’s preflight too.

The embedded profile makes each print file several megabytes larger: that is the price of a file that prints the same anywhere.