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Printing Composites
Now that you’ve picked up some printer’s jargon, you’re ready to learn how to put it all together. This section explores the labyrinth of options available for printing composite images. Later in this chapter, I cover color separations and duotones.Like any Windows or Macintosh application, Photoshop can print composite images to nearly any output device you can hook up to your computer. Assuming that your printer is turned on, properly attached, and in working order, printing a composite image from Photoshop is a five-step process, as outlined next. The sections that follow describe each of these steps in detail.STEPS: Printing a Composite Image
Choose your printer. Use the Printers control panel on your PC or the Print Center utility on the Mac to select the output device to which you want to print. If your computer is not part of a network, you probably rely on a single output device, in which case you can skip this step.
Choose File Print with Preview or press Ctrl+Alt+P (z -Option-P on the Mac). This command displays the Print with Preview dialog box, where you can position the image on the page, scale the print size of the image, and select a few other options, as discussed later in this chapter. Before you select those settings, however, click the Page Setup button to specify the page size and orientation of the image on the page. Then return to the Print with Preview dialog box and click the Show More Options check box to display and select still more output options.
Adjust the halftone screens, if needed. Choose Output from the pop-up menu below the Show More Options check box. Then click the Screen button to change the size, angle, and shape of the halftone screen dots. This step is purely optional and useful mostly for creating special effects.
Adjust the transfer function again, if needed. Click the Transfer button to map brightness values in an image to different shades when printed. This step is also optional, though frequently useful.
Click the Print button to open the Print dialog box. Depending on your printer, you may also be able to access specialized output functions here. After you’ve tweaked all relevant print settings, click the Print button to send the image to the printer.
If you already have your printer set up to your satisfaction, you can simply choose the File Print command or press Ctrl+P (z -P on the Mac) to skip Steps 2 through 4 and go directly to the Print dialog box. Or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P (z -Option-Shift-P on the Mac) to access the Print One Copy command located under the File menu.
| Caution | At this point, you may be wondering about drag-and-drop printing, where you drag a file and drop it onto a printer icon at the desktop. Although this approach may seem more convenient, Photoshop still has to launch and access the same functions as when you use the manual process. And in the worst-case scenario, the operating system may print your image from the wrong application. Drag-and-drop printing is great for making quick copies of text files, but when printing photographs and other artwork, don’t look for shortcuts. |
Choosing a printer on a PC
To select a printer in most Windows systems, choose Start Settings Printers. Right-click your printer of choice and select Set As Default Printer from the resulting pop-up menu. If you want to add a printer, double-click the Add Printer icon and be sure to have either your Windows CD-ROM or a drivers disk from your printer manufacturer.
Under Windows XP, choose Start Control Panel, select Printers and Other Hardware, and then select Printers and Faxes. Double-click the desired printer, and in the resulting window, choose Set As Default Printer from the Printer menu, as shown in Figure 18-1. To add a printer, choose the Add a Printer option from the Printer Tasks menu and follow the steps in the Add Printer Wizard.
Figure 18-1: Under Windows XP, specify your default printer in the Printers and Faxes window.
Printer drivers help the PC hardware, Windows, and Photoshop translate the contents of an image to the printer hardware and the page-description language it uses. You generally want to select the driver for your specific model of printer. But you can, if necessary, prepare an image for output to a printer that isn’t currently hooked up to your computer. For example, you can use this technique before submitting a document to be output on an imagesetter at a service bureau.Most high-end graphics applications can take advantage of PostScript printer description (PPD) files. A single driver can’t account for the myriad differences between different models of PostScript printers, so each PPD serves as a little guidance file, customizing the driver to accommodate a specific printer model. Windows lets you attach a PPD file globally to your PostScript printer, for which you need both the PPD file and the INF file to tell Windows what to install. (Adobe offers its own printer driver called AdobePS — available at www.adobe.com — which doesn’t require INF files. The setup program works for only Adobe-licensed PostScript printers, however.)
Choosing a printer on a Mac
If your printer is on a network, you may first need to ensure that you are properly connected to the network. After that, open the Print Center utility, located in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder, and select a printer from the Printer List.Most of the time, you’ll want to select the printer driver for your specific model of printer. But as I mentioned previously, you can use this technique to prepare an image for output on an imagesetter or another device that isn’t currently hooked up to your computer.Any PostScript printer driver beyond LaserWriter 8 includes support for PPD files. After selecting a printer from the right-hand scrolling list, you can access the proper PPD by clicking the Configure button. (Or just double-click the printer name in the list.) Then click the Auto Setup button to instruct the system software to automatically select the correct PPD for your printer.
Setting up the page
The next step is to define the relationship between the current image and the page on which it prints. You handle most aspects of this part of the printing process in the Print with Preview dialog box, shown in Figure 18-2. To open the dialog box, choose File Print with Preview or press Ctrl+Alt+P (z -Option-P on the Mac). If the options shown at the bottom half of the figure aren’t visible, select the Show More Options check box to display them.
Figure 18-2: The Print with Preview dialog box enables you to precisely position the image, scale the image, and handle almost all other print setup chores.
The settings in the Print with Preview dialog box relate to the printer, paper size, and page orientation you select in the Page Setup dialog box. So unless you want to use Page Setup options that you already established, click the Page Setup button to transport to that dialog box. Alternatively, you can open the dialog box by choosing File Page Setup or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P (z -Shift-P on the Mac) when the Print with Preview dialog box isn’t open. The next section explains the important choices you need to make in the Page Setup dialog box; after that, I discuss a myriad of other print settings.
| Note | Some of Photoshop’s print options may appear in several different dialog boxes. For example, you may find image-scaling controls in the Page Setup dialog box, as well as in the Print with Preview dialog box. For most print attributes, Photoshop doesn’t care where you specify your print options. But if you want to scale the image for output, use the Scaled Print Size controls in the Print with Preview dialog box. If you scale the image in the Page Setup dialog box, the Scale, Height, and Width values in the Print with Preview dialog box may not reflect accurate values. Or better yet, specify these settings using the Image Size command, as discussed in Chapter 3. |
The Page Setup dialog box
The Page Setup dialog box varies depending on what kind of printer you use. Figure 18-3 shows the Mac OS X and Windows 2000 Page Setup options for a Tektronix Phaser 750N, a professional-level PostScript printer.
Figure 18-3: Use this dialog box to choose the page size and image orientation.
Even though the Page Setup dialog box offers different options for different printers, you should always have access to the following (or their equivalents):
Paper size: Select the size of the paper loaded into your printer’s paper tray. The paper size you select determines the imageable area of a page — that is, the amount of the page that Photoshop can use to print the current image. For example, the Letter option calls for a page that measures 8.511 inches, but only about 7.510 inches is imageable.
Source (Windows only): Virtually all printers include paper cartridges, but some permit you to manually feed pages or switch between cartridges. Use this option to decide where your paper is coming from.
Orientation: You can specify whether an image prints upright on a page (Portrait) or on its side (Landscape) by selecting the corresponding Orientation option. Use the Landscape setting when an image is wider than it is tall.
Position and scaling options
All the options I’ve described so far are constant regardless of what application you’re using. However, the settings in the Print with Preview dialog box (shown earlier, in Figure 18-2) are unique to Photoshop. These settings enable you to position the image on the page and perform a few other handy printing adjustments:
Position: If you want the image to print smack dab in the middle of the page, leave the Center Image check box selected. Otherwise, deselect the Center Image check box and enter values in the Top and Left option boxes to position the image with respect to the top-left corner of the page. You can select from five different measurement units for these options. If you’re not overly concerned about placing the image exactly at a certain spot, deselect the Center Image check box and then just drag the image in the preview on the left side of the dialog box.The preview updates to show you the current image position.
Scaling: If you want to adjust the image size for only the current print job, use these controls. They have no effect on the actual image file — they merely scale the image for printing. You can enter a scale percentage; anything over 100 percent enlarges the image, and values under 100 percent reduce the image. Or enter a specific size in the Height and Width option boxes. If you want Photoshop to adjust the image automatically to fit the page size, select the Scale to Fit Media check box.The Show Bounding Box option, when selected, displays handles at the corners of the preview image. For quick-and-dirty scaling, you can drag the handles until the image is the approximate print size you want.
Print selection: If you selected a rectangular area before opening the dialog box, you can print just the selection by turning on the Print Selected Area check box. Any scaling and position settings still apply to the printed output.
| Tip | Photoshop prints only visible layers and channels, so you can print select layers or channels in an image by hiding all the other layers or channels. (To hide and display layers and channels, click the eyeball icon next to the layer or channel name in the Layers or Channels palette, respectively.) To print a single layer or channel, Alt-click (Win) or Option-click (Mac) the eyeball. |
Output options
To display the special print options shown at the bottom of Figure 18-2, earlier in this chapter, select the Show More Options check box and then select Output from the pop-up menu immediately below. (If any options are dimmed, your printer doesn’t support them.)The five Output buttons work as follows:
Background: To assign a color to the area around the printed image, click this button and select a color from the Color Picker dialog box, described in Chapter 4. This button and the one that follows (Border) are designed specifically to accommodate slides printed from a film recorder. If you select either of these options, Photoshop updates the preview to show them.
Border: To print a border around the current image, click this button and enter the thickness of the border in the Width option box. The border automatically appears in black.
Bleed: This button lets you print outside the imageable area of the page when outputting to an imagesetter. (Imagesetters print to huge rolls of paper or film, so you can print far outside the confines of standard page sizes. Most other printers use regular old sheets of paper; any bleed — were the printer to acknowledge it — would print off the edge of the page.) Click the Bleed button and enter the thickness of the bleed in the Width option box. Two picas (24 points) is generally a good bet. (Bleeds are defined in the “Understanding Printing Terminology” glossary at the beginning of this chapter.)
Screen: Click this button to enter a dialog box that enables you to change the size, angle, and shape of the printed halftone cells, as described in the upcoming “Changing the halftone screen” section.
Transfer: The dialog box that appears when you click this button enables you to redistribute shades in the printed image, as explained in the upcoming section, “Specifying a transfer function.”
Most of the Output check boxes — all except Negative, Emulsion Down, Interpolation, and Include Vector Data — append special labels and printer marks to the printed version of the image. Figure 18-4 illustrates how they look when printed. For all options except Interpolation and Include Vector Data, Photoshop shows the result of selecting the check box in the image preview.
Figure 18-4: An image printed with nearly all the Output check boxes turned on.
Interpolation: If you own an output device equipped with PostScript Level 2 or later, you can instruct Photoshop to antialias the printed appearance of a low-resolution image by selecting this option. The output device resamples the image up to 200 percent and then reduces the image to its original size using bicubic interpolation (as described in the “General preferences” section of Chapter 2), thereby creating a less-jagged image. This option has no effect on older-model PostScript devices.
Calibration Bars: A calibration bar is a 10-step grayscale gradation beginning at 10-percent black and ending at 100-percent black. The function of the calibration bar is to ensure that all shades are distinct and on target. If not, the output device isn’t properly calibrated, which is a fancy way of saying that the printer’s colors are out of whack and need realignment by a trained professional armed with a hammer and a hacksaw. When you print color separations, the Calibration Bars check box instructs Photoshop to print a gradient tint bar and a progressive color bar, also useful to printing professionals.
Registration Marks: Select this option to print eight crosshairs and two star targets near the four corners of the image. Registration marks are imperative when you print color separations; they provide the only reliable means to ensure exact registration of the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black printing plates. When printing a composite image, however, you can ignore this option.
Corner Crop Marks: Select this option to print eight hairline crop marks — two in each of the image’s four corners — which indicate how to trim the image in case you anticipate engaging in a little traditional paste-up work.
Center Crop Marks: Select this option to print four pairs of hairlines that mark the center of the image. Each pair forms a cross. Two pairs are located on the sides of the image, the third pair is above it, and the fourth pair is below the image.
Description: To print a description below the image, select this option. Then press Enter or Return to exit the dialog box, choose File File Info, and enter a caption in the Description field of the Description section of the File Info dialog box. The description prints in 9-point Helvetica. This is strictly an image- annotation feature, something to help you 17 years down the road, when your brain starts to deteriorate and you can’t remember why you printed the darn thing. (You might also use the description to keep images straight in a busy office where hundreds of folks have access to the same images, but I don’t like this alternative as much because I can’t make fun of it.)
Labels: When you select this check box, Photoshop prints the name of the image and the name of the printed color channel in 9-point Helvetica. If you process many images, you’ll find this option extremely useful for associating printouts with documents on disk.
| Note | Incidentally, Figure 18-4 shows the actual labels and marks exactly as they print. I started by printing the Photoshop image to disk as an EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) file (as I describe later in the “Printing pages” section). Then I used Illustrator to open the EPS file and assign the callouts. This may not sound like much, but in the old days this would have been impossible. Figure 18-4 represents a practical benefit to Illustrator’s (and Photoshop’s) capability to open just about any EPS file on the planet. |
Emulsion Down: The emulsion is the side of a piece of film on which an image is printed. When the Emulsion Down check box is turned off, film prints from an imagesetter emulsion side up. When the check box is turned on, Photoshop flips the image so the emulsion side is down. Like the Negative option, discussed next, this option is useful only when you print film from an imagesetter, and this option should be set in accordance with the preferences of your commercial printer.
Negative: When you select this option, Photoshop prints all blacks as white and all whites as black. In-between colors switch accordingly. For example, 20- percent black becomes 80-percent black. Imagesetter operators use this option to print composites and color separations to film negatives.
Include Vector Data: If your image contains any vector objects or type for which outline data is available (not outline or protected fonts), select this check box to send the actual vector data to a PostScript printer. Your vector objects then can be scaled to any size without degrading the quality. Including the vector data increases the image file size, which can slow printing and cause other printing problems. But if you turn off the check box, everything in the image is sent to the printer as raster data. This reduces the file size, but you no longer can scale the vector objects or type with impunity. They’re subject to the same quality loss that occurs when you enlarge any pixel-based image.
Encoding: Select an option from this pop-up menu to control the encoding method used to send the image file to the printer. In normal printing situations, leave the option set to the default, Binary. If your network doesn’t support binary encoding (highly unlikely in this day and age) or your printer is attached through the local parallel printer port instead of the network, select the ASCII option to transfer PostScript data in the text-only format. The printing process takes much longer to complete, but at least it’s possible. If your printer supports PostScript Level 2 or later, you can also choose to use JPEG compression to reduce the amount of data sent to the printer. (This option is applicable to only PostScript printers.)
Color management options
After you select the Show More Options check box in the Print with Preview dialog box, you can display color management settings by selecting Color Management from the pop-up menu, as shown in Chapter 16.
Figure 18-5: Use these options to dictate which color management settings you want Photoshop to use when printing.
You can select from two Source Space options, Document and Proof. These options tell Photoshop whether you want to print the image according to the color profile officially assigned to the image file or according to the Proof Setup profile (the so- called “soft proofing” profile). Document uses the actual color profile; Proof uses the profile currently selected in the View Proof Setup submenu.The Profile options control whether Photoshop converts the image to a different profile during the printing process. If you select Same As Source from the Profile pop-up menu, no conversion occurs. To convert to a different profile, select the profile from the pop-up menu. You can then specify the rendering method by selecting it from the Intent pop-up menu.
You can convert to any color space offered by Photoshop, Kodak’s ICC CMS (Win), or Apple’s ColorSync (Mac). Ideally, you want to select the specific profile for your brand of printer. If you can’t find such a profile, you’ll probably want to stick with the RGB color space (specified in the Color Settings dialog box). Another option is to choose Working CMYK, which prints the image just as if you had converted it to the CMYK color space. Unfortunately, most consumer printers are designed to accommodate RGB images and fare pretty badly when printing artwork converted to CMYK. (This is precisely the reason I frequently select RGB Color even when printing a CMYK image — it flat out produces better results.)
| Tip | If you own a color printer, I encourage you to take an hour out of your day and conduct a few tests with the other Print Space options. For example, if you select Apple RGB, your printed image will darken several shades. This might throw you. Because the Apple RGB profile features the lightest of the monitor gammas — 1.8 — you might expect the image to print lighter. But what Photoshop is really doing is converting the colors as if the printer were as naturally light as an Apple RGB monitor. To maintain consistent color, the conversion therefore darkens the image to account for this unusually light device. Select the Wide Gamut setting and the colors appear lighter and washed out, again accounting for this hypersaturated Space setting. So think opposite. |
| Caution | Yet another alternative is to convert an RGB image to the grayscale color space during printing. But it’s generally a bad alternative. Asking Photoshop to perform this conversion on-the-fly dramatically increases the output time, as well as the likelihood of printing errors. It’s better and much faster to simply convert the image to the grayscale mode (Image Mode Grayscale) and then print it. |
| Cross-Reference | Again, if you’re unfamiliar with any of these terms or just don’t know which options are best for your printing situation, review Chapter 16, where I discuss color management in detail. |
Changing the halftone screen
Before I explain the Screen option, available when you select Output from the popup menu in the Print with Preview dialog box, I need to explain a bit more about how printing works. To keep costs down, commercial printers use as few inks as possible to create the appearance of a wide variety of colors. Suppose you want to print an image of a pink flamingo wearing a red bow tie. Your commercial printer could print the flamingo in one pass using pink ink, let that color dry, and then load the red ink and print the bow tie. But why go to all this trouble? After all, pink is only a lighter shade of red. Why not imitate the pink by lightening the red ink?Unfortunately, with the exception of dye-sublimation printers, high-end inkjets, and film recorders, output devices can’t print lighter shades of colors. They recognize only solid ink and the absence of ink. So how do you print the lighter shade of red necessary to represent pink?
The answer is halftoning. The output device organizes printer pixels into spots called halftone cells. Because the cells are so small, your eyes cannot quite focus on them. Instead, the cells appear to blend with the white background of the page to create a lighter shade of an ink. Figure 18-6 shows a detail of an image enlarged to display the individual halftone cells.
Figure 18-6: A detail from an image (top) is enlarged so that you can see the individual halftone cells (bottom).
The cells grow and shrink to emulate different shades of color. Large cells result in dark shades; small cells result in light shades. Cell size is measured in printer pixels. The maximum size of any cell is a function of the number of cells in an inch, called the screen frequency.For example, suppose the default frequency of your printer is 60 halftone cells per linear inch and the resolution is 300 printer pixels per linear inch. Each halftone cell must, therefore, measure 5 pixels wide by 5 pixels tall (300 60 = 5), for a total of 25 (52) pixels per cell. When all pixels in a cell are turned off, the cell appears white; when all pixels are turned on, you get solid ink. By turning on different numbers of pixels — from 0 to 25 — the printer can create a total of 26 shades, as demonstrated in Figure 18-7.
Figure 18-7: 55-pixel halftone cells with different numbers of pixels activated, ranging from 25 (top left) to 0 (bottom right). Each cell represents a unique shade from 100- to 0-percent black.
Photoshop enables you to change the size, angle, and shape of the individual halftone cells used to represent an image on the printed page. To do so, click the Screen button in the Print with Preview dialog box (after clicking Show More Options and choosing Output from the pop-up menu). The Halftone Screens dialog box shown in Figure 18-8 appears.
Figure 18-8: Use the Halftone Screens dialog box to edit the size, angle, and shape of the halftone cells for any one ink.
In the dialog box, you can manipulate the following options:
Use Printer’s Default Screens: Select this check box to accept the default size, angle, and shape settings built into your printer’s ROM. All other options in the Halftone Screens dialog box automatically become dimmed to show that they are no longer in force.
Ink: If the current image is in color, you can select the specific ink you want to adjust from the Ink pop-up menu. When you work with a grayscale image, no pop-up menu is available.
Frequency: Enter a new value in this option box to change the number of halftone cells that print per linear inch. A higher value translates to a larger quantity of smaller cells; a smaller value creates fewer, larger cells. Frequency is traditionally measured in lpi, or lines per inch (as in lines of halftone cells), but you can change the measurement to lines per centimeter by selecting Lines/cm from the pop-up menu to the right of the option box.
| Tip | Higher screen frequencies result in smoother looking printouts. Raising the Frequency value, however, also decreases the number of shades an output device can print because it decreases the size of each halftone cell and, likewise, decreases the number of printer pixels per cell. Fewer printer pixels mean fewer shades. You can calculate the precise number of printable shades using the following formula:Number of shades = (printer resolution frequency)2 + 1 |
Angle: To change the orientation of the lines of halftone cells, enter a new value in the Angle option box. In the name of accuracy, Photoshop accepts any value between negative and positive 180 degrees.
| Caution | When printing color composites to inkjet and thermal-wax printers, and when printing color separations, Photoshop calculates the optimum Frequency and Angle values required to print seamless colors. In such a case, you should change these values only if you know exactly what you’re doing. Otherwise, your printout may exhibit weird patterning effects. When printing grayscale images, though, you can edit these values to your heart’s content. |
Shape: By default, most PostScript printers rely on roundish halftone cells. You can change the appearance of all cells for an ink by selecting one of six alternate shapes from the Shape pop-up menu. For a demonstration of four of these shapes, see Figure 4-9 in the “Black and white (bitmap)” section of Chapter 4. If you know how to write PostScript code, you can select the Custom option to display a text-entry dialog box and code away.
Use Accurate Screens: If your output device is equipped with PostScript Level 2 or later, select this option to subscribe to the updated screen angles for full- color output. Otherwise, don’t worry about this option.
Use Same Shape for All Inks: Select this option if you want to apply a single set of size, angle, and shape options to the halftone cells for all inks used to represent the current image. Unless you want to create some sort of special effect, leave this check box deselected. The option is unavailable when you are printing a grayscale image.
Auto: Click this button to display the Auto Screens dialog box, which automates the halftone editing process. Enter the resolution of your output device in the Printer option box. Then enter the screen frequency you want to use in the Screen option box. After you press Enter or Return to confirm your change, Photoshop automatically calculates the optimum screen frequencies for all inks. This technique is most useful when you print full-color images — because Photoshop does the work for you, you can’t make a mess of things.
Load and Save: You can load and save settings to disk in case you want to reapply the options to other images. These buttons are useful if you find a magic combination of halftone settings that results in a really spectacular printout.
| Tip | You can change the default size, angle, and shape settings that Photoshop applies to all future images by Alt-clicking (Win) or Option-clicking (Mac) the Save button. When you press Alt (Win) or Option (Mac), the Save button changes to read ->Default. To restore the default screen settings at any time, Alt-click (Win) or Option-click (Mac) the Load button (<-Default). |
| Cross-Reference | The Halftone Screens dialog box settings don’t apply to printing images only directly from Photoshop. You can export these settings along with the image for placement in QuarkXPress or some other application by saving the image in the Photoshop EPS format. Make sure you turn on the Include Halftone Screen check box in the EPS Format dialog box, as discussed in the “Saving an EPS image” section of Chapter 3. This also applies to transfer function settings, explained in the following section, “Specifying a transfer function.” |
| Caution | If you decide to include the halftone screen information with your EPS file, be sure the settings are compatible with your intended output device. You don’t want to specify a low Frequency value such as 60 lpi when printing to a state-of-the-art 3,600-dpi imagesetter, for example. If you have any questions, be sure to call your service bureau or commercial printer before saving the image. You don’t want both a last-minute surprise and a hefty bill, to boot. |
Specifying a transfer function
A transfer function enables you to change the way on-screen brightness values translate — or map — to printed shades. By default, brightness values print to their nearest shade percentages. A 30-percent gray pixel on screen (which equates to a brightness value of roughly 180) prints as a 30-percent gray value.Problems arise, however, when your output device prints lighter or darker than it should. For example, in the course of using a LaserWriter NTX over the past several years — I know it’s going to die one day but, until then, it keeps chugging along — I’ve discovered all gray values print overly dark. Dark values fill in and become black; light values appear a dismal gray, muddying up any highlights. The problem increases if I try to reproduce the image on a photocopier.To compensate for this overdarkening effect, I clicked the Transfer button in the Print with Preview dialog box after clicking Show More Options and choosing Output from the pop-up menu, and then I entered the values shown in Figure 18-9. Notice I lightened 20-percent on-screen grays to 10-percent printer grays. I also lightened 90-percent screen grays to 80-percent printer grays. The result is a smooth, continuous curve that maps each gray value in an image to a lighter value on paper.
Figure 18-9: The transfer function curve enables you to map on-screen brightness values to specific shades on paper.
The options in the Transfer Functions dialog box work as follows:
Transfer graph: The transfer graph is where you map on-screen brightness values to their printed equivalents. The horizontal axis of the graph represents on-screen brightness values; the vertical axis represents printed shades. The transfer curve charts the relationship between on-screen and printed colors. The lower-left corner is the origin of the graph — the point at which both the on-screen brightness value and the printed shade are white. Move to the right in the graph for darker on-screen values; move up for darker printed shades. Click in the graph to add points to the line. Drag up on a point to darken the output; drag down to lighten the output.
| Cross-Reference | For a more comprehensive explanation of how to graph colors on a curve, read about the incredibly powerful Curves command, covered in Chapter 17. |
Percentage option boxes: The option boxes are labeled according to the on- screen brightness values. To lighten or darken the printed brightness values, enter higher or lower percentage values in the option boxes. There is a direct correlation between changes made to the transfer graph and the option boxes. For example, if you enter a value in the 50-percent option box, a new point appears along the middle line of the graph.
Override Printer’s Default Functions: As an effect of printer calibration, some printers have custom transfer functions built into their read-only memory (ROM). If you have problems making your settings take effect, select this check box to instruct Photoshop to apply the transfer function you specify, regardless of the output device’s built-in transfer function.
Load and Save: Use these buttons to load settings to disk and save settings to disk, respectively. Alt-click (Win) or Option-click (Mac) the buttons to retrieve and save default settings.
Ink controls: When you print a full-color image, five options appear in the lower-right corner of the Transfer Functions dialog box. These options enable you to apply different transfer functions to different inks. Select the All Same check box to apply a single transfer function to all inks. To apply a different function to each ink, deselect the check box, and then select one of the radio buttons and edit the points in the transfer graph as desired.
Printing pages
When you finish slogging your way through the Page Setup and Print with Preview dialog boxes, you can initiate the printing process by clicking the Print button in the Print with Preview dialog box or by choosing File Print. The Print dialog box appears, shown in its Mac and Windows 2000 forms in Figure 18-10.
Figure 18-10: The Print dialog box as it appears on the Mac (top) and in Windows 2000 (bottom).
Several options in this dialog box also appear in the Print with Preview dialog box or the Page Setup dialog box, both discussed earlier in this chapter. The few remaining options you need to understand work as follows:
Copies: Enter the number of copies you want to print in this option box. You can print up to 999 copies of a single image if you want to, but I’ll just bet you don’t.
Print Range (Pages on the Mac): No such thing as a multipage document exists in Photoshop, so you can ignore these options for the most part. If you selected an image area with the rectangular marquee tool, you can print just the selected area by choosing the Selection radio button (Win) or the Print Selected Area check box (Mac), if available. Alternatively, you can turn on the Print Selected Area check box in the Print with Preview dialog box. You may want to use this option to divide an image into pieces when it’s too large to fit on a single page.
Print to File (Destination on the Mac): Exclusively applicable to PostScript printing, this option lets you save a PostScript-language version of the file on disk rather than printing it directly to your printer. Under Windows, deselect the Print to File option to print the image to an output device as usual. Select Print to File to write a PostScript-language version of the image to disk. To save a PostScript file to disk on the Mac, choose Output Options from the unnamed pop-up menu in the middle of the dialog box (it’s the one displaying Copies & Pages in Figure 18-10), select the Save as File check box, and choose PostScript from the Format menu.
| Tip | Because Photoshop offers its own EPS option in the Save dialog box, you’ll probably want to ignore this option. In fact, the only reason to select Print to File is to capture printer’s marks, as I did back in Figure 18-4. If you do, a second dialog box appears, asking where you want to save the PostScript file. You can navigate just as in the Open and Save dialog boxes. For the best results, select the Binary radio button. |
| Note | Mac OS X offers a handy Preview button at the bottom of the Print dialog box; click it to generate a PDF file of the image and display it in Adobe Reader (if you have Reader installed). To save the image to Adobe PDF without opening it in Adobe Reader, click the Save As PDF button. |
Press Enter or Return in the Print dialog box to start the printing process on its merry way. To cancel a print in progress, click the Cancel button. If you neglect to cancel before Photoshop spools the print job, don’t worry because you can still cancel. On the PC, choose Settings Printers from the Windows Start menu to display the Printers dialog box. Right-click the icon for the printer you’re using and then select Open. Or you can double-click that tiny printer icon that appears on the far-right side of the taskbar. Either way, Windows shows you a window listing the current print jobs in progress. You can pause or cancel the selected print job by choosing a command from the Document menu. On the Mac, you can cancel the print job from the Print Center utility, which appears in the Dock automatically when you start printing.
Printer-specific options
In addition to the options in the Page Setup and Print dialog boxes, you may be able to control certain print attributes specific to the selected printer. To explore these options in the Print dialog box, click the Properties button on the PC or choose the appropriate command from the middle pop-up menu on the Mac. In the case of the Phaser 750N, for example, I chose the Printer Features command on the Mac to get the dialog box shown at top in Figure 18-11. Under Windows, I clicked the Properties button to display the bottom dialog box in Figure 18-11. Here I have access to additional options, such as color correction and print quality.
Figure 18-11: In the Print dialog box, click the Properties button (Win) or choose Printer Features from the pop-up menu (Mac) to access still more settings that are specific to the kind of printer you’re using.
