Creative Suite Session 4

We were given the task to find 9 errors that had been deliberately made in a indesign document, we had to find them as if we were preparing it to go to print.    

Things to consider

5 ink print job
9 errors 

Things we found 

- 6 inks are being used so it makes it a 6 plate process not 5 which it specified 

- 2 spot colours one is not being used, so delete it 

- The top right Image is RGB needs to be changed to CMYK, right click the image and press edit with then choose Photoshop or use Alt and double click the image 

- One colour swatch is RGB, change it on Swatch Options to CMYK  

- One of the images is 200dpi it should be at least 300dpi, this can be edited in Photoshop 

- The cow needs to be scaled in Photoshop (Alt and double click)  

- Left Logo at the bottom needs to be scaled up in Photoshop. Greyscale TIFF files can have there colours changed in indesign. 

- Right Logo at the bottom needs to be scaled down in Photoshop, (Alt and double click)
this logo would have to be made again because the quality of the image will decrease a lot when scaled.  

- Good Practice to have a tint swatch of the CMYK colour 

- The image of the 'heifer water' should be saved as a TIFF or PSD not a JPEG, reopen the file, right click and open with Photoshop, then save as a TIFF file. Then in indesign relink the image and exchange the jpeg for the tiff file. 

- The type at the bottom is set as a registration not black, the registration is used for printers marks and it will go on every plate so it will be layered with a lot of ink


- The image on the far left doesn't have a bleed of the edge of the page so there might be a white edge when cut. 


There is a quick way we can get to all this information we just discovered about this flyer. We can gather everything together in Package, it makes a copy of everything in the indesign document and all the images and all the fonts, this gives you everything you need to send to the printers. 

It also gives us a summary of what has gone wrong on the document, such as links, images and there resolution, fonts that might not be there and also the inks that are being used. A report can also be printed out. 

It then offers printing instructions, where a note can be left for the printer, such as things that are there for finishing processes. 

It all then gets put into a folder. 


We would also provide a PDF file for the printers, for print the best quality one to use is [Press Quality] 

For Digital Print just use 'High Quality Print' 

If sending an email that will just be viewed on screen smallest file size will do 

PDF contains everything 



PDF export options, during the process of creating a PDF all colours get converted to CMYK apart from Spot colours 

Make sure you confirm with the printers that crop marks and bleed are being used 

Then press export   

Creative Suite Workshop

Today's session will be on illustrator and we will be dealing with colour. 

CMYK - Subtractive - processed colour used for print - usually light colour comes first when printing - key (brings it all together) 

RGB - Additive 

There are different ways of creating colour 
- Colour picker 

-Swatch Pallet 

- Colour Pallet 

We firstly had to make sure our preferences were correct, we had to make sure on preferences that the primary scratch disk was on Scratch  

Creating a new document 

Today are going to focus on the swatch pallet, the swatch pallet allows colour to be applied consistently. There is already a range of swatches there, but we want to create our own colours. To do this we go on the menu select all unused and then delete. 

We then viewed it in a small list which displays the colours a lot clearer as shown below. 

We then went on menu and the new swatch to create our own colours. 

The colour then is shown below the other colours seen in the image below here. The registration colour is crop marks and and register marks for print. 

Next we created boxes that we coloured in, then going on menu and selecting used colours it adds the colours that we've used to our swatch library.  

Next we created tints of a colour and the selected new swatch and again it appeared on our swatch pallet. Creating colours this way by not using the swatch libary it creates a global colour, showed by the corner thats coloured in white on the small swatch, colours without this corner are called local colours but with the corner are called global colours, this means if this swatch is edited it edits any object that has that colour, making 'global' changes within a document. It now allows us to create varying tints of the colour.    

As can be seen below is a range of tints i created just by reducing the percentage by 20% each time. 

Then when you go on a global colour and press swatch options and edit it it changes all the colours 

Next we looked into Spot colours and processed colours. 

Spot colours are much cheaper to print with than processed colours because it only uses 4 colours, they also allow for consistency because the same colour will be printed everywhere. 

We opened up the Pantone colour library next 

We then typed in a colour to search in the find bar shown below.  

The pantone colours are shown by the white triangle in the bottom corner that has a small black dot in the centre. 

The pantone colours can then be added to the swatch list. But the name should never change because when it comes to printing at a printers they wont be able to find the colour without the code. 

Next we saved our swatch list by going on save swatch library as Ai. This can then be opened again by going on open swatch library then user defined then selecting the saved swatches. 

We then saved it again but this time we saved it as a ASE, then going on photoshop we went on the swatches menu then load swatches and then open the swatches which then automatically load to Pohotshop.