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About printing


    Whether you are providing multicolored artwork to an outside service bureau or just sending a quick draft of a drawing to an inkjet or laser printer, knowing a few basics about printing will make the print job go more smoothly and help ensure that the finished artwork appears as intended.

    Types of printing

    When you print a file, the Adobe Illustrator program sends it to a printing device, either to be printed directly onto paper, to a digital printing press, or to be converted to a positive or negative image on film. In the latter case, the film can then be used to create a master plate for printing by a mechanical press.

    Types of images

    The simplest types of images, such as a page of text, use only one color in one level of gray. A more complex image is one whose color tones vary within the image. This type of image is known as a continuous-tone image. A scanned photograph is an example of a continuous-tone image.

    Halftoning

    To create the illusion of continuous tone when printed, images are broken down into a series of dots. This process is called halftoning. Varying the sizes and densities of the dots in a halftone screen creates the optical illusion of variations of gray or continuous color in the image.

    Color separation

    Artwork that will be commercially reproduced and that contains more than a single color must be printed on separate master plates, one for each color. This process is called color separation.

    Getting detail

    The detail in a printed image results from a combination of resolution and screen frequency. The higher an output device's resolution, the finer (higher) a screen ruling you can use. (See Specifying the halftone screen ruling.)

    Transparency

    If the artwork contains transparency, it will be flattened according to settings in the Document Setup dialog box. Using the Quality/Speed slider, you can affect the ratio of rasterized versus vector images in the printed artwork. (See Printing and saving transparent artwork.)