About printing


    Illustrator's Print dialog box is designed to help you through the printing workflow. Each set of options in the dialog box--from General options to Summary options--is organized to guide you through the process of printing your document.

    However, 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. You can also print to a PostScript or PDF file instead of a printer, and provide the resulting file to a print service bureau.

    Types of images

    The simplest types of images, such as a page of text, use only one color or 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. For example, four plates, one each for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks can be combined to reproduce most colors. This process of separating the colors for use on different printing plates is called color separation.

    For more information, see About separations.

    If you are making color separations, you can print a color or grayscale composite proof to check your work. A composite proof can help you to preview and check your artwork before printing final (and costly) separations. When Illustrator prints a composite, it prints all of the colors used in the file on the same page or plate.

    Any overprinting options that you have selected in the document will print correctly on a composite, unless you have chosen Discard from the Overprint menu located with the Advanced options in the Print dialog box. You should also remember that, as with color monitors, color printers vary greatly in color reproduction quality; thus, composites from a color printer should never substitute for proofs made by the print shop.

    Getting detail

    The detail in a printed image is controlled by specifying an appropriate combination of resolution and screen frequency values. The higher an output device's resolution, the finer (higher) a screen ruling you can use. (See Specifying the printer resolution (the halftone screen ruling).)

    Transparency and flattening

    If the artwork contains transparency, it will be flattened according to the transparency flattener presets specified in the Print dialog box. Using the Rasters/Vectors setting in the transparency flattener presets, you can affect the ratio of rasterized images versus vector objects in the printed artwork. (See Transparency flattener options.)