Trapping refers to how much overprinting colors overlap to eliminate white lines between colors in printing. Trapping digital files are used for compensating for misregristration on the printing press by printing small areas of overlapping color.
Dry trapping is printing wet ink over dry ink.
Wet trapping is printing wet ink over previously printed ink.
The paper or plate applying the ink may shift. It may be 1mm shift but this can throw off your design enough to be noticed depending on the product you are printing.
When will you use trapping?
When you are printing 2 diffenent colors that overlap they "knockout". They will not print on top of each other. Knockouts may require trapping so there are no color gaps or white spaces where they are not suppose to be on your final product. When using trapping you also need to know how to set the trap depending on the number of overlapping objects, imported images, and the use of gradient fills need to be taken into consideration
There is manual trapping in Adobe Illustrator. You can create simple manual traps by applying outlines (overprinting strokes) to objects or use a plug-in that applies the appropriate trap
There is also built in trapping in Quark X-Press, Adobe PageMaker and Adobe InDesign
If trapping is necessary you can talk to your printer about their recommendations. Printing companies also have dedicated trapping software like TrapWise and Trapper.
What is Prepress? Prepress is a term used to describe the process used to make a document ready for print in any environment. screening (eg. with photographs) copyediting type (kerning, widows, orphans) proofreading (spelling, page layout, document size, bleeds, gripper edge) retouching (modify or correct photographic images) imposition (layout of pages so that after folding, collating, printing and trimming they all end up in the correct order and right way up) trapping ( creating an overlap between areas to compensate for any misregistration) color separation (make sure colors separate properly) and that your using proper colors if requires spot, cmyk or special pantone. In other words there are things that need to be done to get a file printed, either through laser or digital printing format. Proofreading, editing, layout, scanning and color separation are the major ones. Which should all be done before you send your files to the printer. Once you have gone through all of the s
Comments
Post a Comment