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Printing from Illustrator

Printing a file should be a straightforward experience, but it wasn't always that way in Adobe Illustrator. Prior to Illustrator CS, getting a file to print correctly often meant opening the Page Setup dialog, the Document Setup dialog, and the Print dialog. With the release of Illustrator CS, however, Adobe updated Illustrator's printing engine and interface and modeled them after the Print dialog found in Adobe InDesign. Now, you can go directly to the Print dialog and control all of your print specifications in one place.

Because every print job is different and has specific requirements, we've organized the contents of this chapter to match the order in which print features appear in the Print dialog. In this way, you can read the chapter and use it as a handy reference as well.

The General Print Panel

As you're designing a job, printing quick and accurate proofs to your laser or inkjet printer is just as important as printing final output to an image setter. For this reason, you'll find that Adobe put many often-used settings in the General panel of the Print dialog (Figure 11.1 ). This way you can quickly print consistent and accurate files from Illustrator without having to dance between multiple dialogs or settings panels. At the top of the Print dialog you'll find a pop-up to choose from predefined Print Presets (more on Print Presets later in this chapter), a pop-up to choose which printer you want to print to (extremely useful for those of you who have several different printers at your disposal), and a pop-up to choose a PPD (PostScript Printer Definition) file.

Figure 11.1. The General panel in the Print dialog contains the most often-used print settings.

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A PPD file contains specific information about a printer, including media dimensions, color information, and printer-specific settings like resolution. Illustrator makes an educated guess to select the right PPD file for your selected printer, although you can override it and choose your own if you need to. You can choose a PPD only when a PostScript device is selected as your printer.

Along the left side of the Print dialog is a list of all of the different panels you can choose from to specify a range of print options. Beneath the list of panels is a print preview, which gives you a better idea of what will print. But this is no ordinary print previewit's interactive. You can click and drag the artwork around in the preview to determine which part of the paper the art will print on (Figure 11.2 ). Hold the Shift key while dragging to constrain movement to the X or Y axis and double-click anywhere on the preview to reset the positioning to the default. As you specify changes in the Print dialog, like adding trim marks, you'll see those appear in the preview as well.

Figure 11.2. If you're an experienced Illustrator user, you may have used the Page tool to print different parts of a page; you can now do this directly from the Print dialog by moving the artwork within the interactive print preview.

One of the options available in the Printer list is Adobe PostScript File, which allows you to print your document as a PostScript file that can then be downloaded directly to a printer, or converted to PDF using Acrobat Distiller.

Basic Print Options

As in just about any other program, in the Print dialog, you can specify the number of copies as well as the range of pages that you want to print. Although it's true that Illustrator doesn't have multiple pages, when you're using the Page Tiling option (which we'll cover shortly), each tile is assigned a page number, which allows you to specify exactly what will print. When you specify a range of pages, use a comma as a separation device and a hyphen to indicate a continuous string of pages. For example, you can specify a range of 1-3, 6, which will print pages 1, 2, 3, and 6.

The items that we've discussed to this point, which appear across the top and along the left side of the Print dialog, are always visible no matter which panel of the dialog is active.

In the Media section of the dialog, you can specify the size of the paper on which you want to print. The items that appear in this pop-up are defined by the PPD file that is chosen for your printer. If your printer supports it, you'll also have the ability to define custom media sizes; being able to do so is extremely useful for those of you who have large-format inkjet printers, or for those of you who are printing to image setters or plate setters. Additionally, you can choose an orientation to flip a page on its side. Changing the orientation can be extremely important when printers want to choose which side of a sheet the press will grip from.

You can use the Print Layers pop-up menu to specify what kinds of layers will or won't print: Visible & Printable Layers, Visible Layers, or All Layers. Additionally, you can set a custom scale size at which to print your file. The Do Not Scale option prints your file at actual size, the Fit to Page option reduces or enlarges your artwork so that it fills the entire size of the output media, and the Custom Scale settings allow you to specify any scale size for the height and/or the width.

The Setup Print Panel

When you print a file, you can specify which parts of the artwork will print by choosing from the three different Crop Artwork settings (Figure 11.3 ):

Artboard. The Artboard setting uses the boundaries of the artboard as the printable area and is the default setting. When you choose this setting, only artwork that appears on the artboard prints.

Artwork Bounding Box. The Artwork Bounding Box setting uses the boundaries of the artwork that appears in the document, no matter whether the artwork appears on or off the artboard. This setting is useful when you use it with the Fit to Page option to print a piece of art that fills an entire page.

Crop Area. The Crop Area setting uses a user-defined area for the boundaries of the printable area. To define a crop area, you can draw a rectangle around any portion of your file and choose Object > Crop Area > Make. If no crop area is manually defined, Illustrator uses the artboard size as the crop area.

Figure 11.3. Using the different Crop Artwork settings can make it easy to print the parts of a file that you want.

Using Page Tiling

Page Tiling is a feature that was initially added to Illustrator to enable users to print a single large file across several smaller pages. This would allow a designer to assemble a large document at actual size using a printer with smaller media sizes. However, over the years, designers learned to use this feature to create a single large artboard, using the tiled areas as a substitute for multiple pages. For example, setting up a document at 11 x 17 inches with Page Tiling would result in two 8½ x 11 pages.

There are three Page Tiling settings that you can choose from (Figure 11.4 ):

Single Full Page. The Single Full Page option turns tiling off and treats the entire artboard as a single page.

Tile Full Pages. The Tile Full Pages option divides a single artboard into multiple sections, or tiles. Each tile matches the media size you choose in the General panel, and Illustrator creates as many of those tiles as necessary to cover the entire document.

Tile Imageable Areas. The Tile Imageable Areas option divides a single artboard into multiple sections, or tiles. Tiles match the media size you choose in the General panel where possible, and Illustrator creates custom-sized tiles as necessary to tile the entire document.

Figure 11.4. You can simulate a multiple page document by setting up a large page with one of the tiling settings.

Because tiling is something you might want to set in your document before you even start working on your design, be aware of the Done button that appears at the bottom of the Print dialog. Clicking Done keeps the settings you've made in the Print dialog and returns you to the document for further editing and designing without actually printing the file. Although it may seem odd to open the Print dialog to specify tiling settings, remember that the main reason for tiling in Illustrator is specific to printing.

When you're using Tile Full Pages or Tile Imageable Areas, each tile is assigned a number, and you can specify which tiles you want to print by entering a tile number in the Page Range field in the General panel.

The Marks and Bleed Print Panel

When printing a page for final output, you need to add page marks and bleeds to help printers print the job correctly on press.

Trim marks tell a printer where to cut the paper;

registration marks help a printer align each separated plate correctly;

color bars help a printer calibrate color correctly on press; and

page information makes it possible for printers to easily identify each separated plate (Figure 11.5 ).

Figure 11.5. A printer uses a variety of printer marks to help ensure that the job prints correctly.

Appendix C,

Illustrator Preferences , for examples of these). The trim mark weight determines the width of the strokes used to create trim marks, and the offset determines how far from the page the trim marks will appear.

Page marks print outside the margins of the artboard (or wherever you've defined a crop area), so you need to make sure that the media size you've chosen in the General panel is large enough to include the page marks. If you use the Fit to Page option, Illustrator scales the entire document to ensure that the trim marks print on the chosen page.

Specifying Bleed

When you have artwork that extends beyond the boundary of a page, you can specify a bleed setting to ensure that the printable area of the page includes the extra bleed area. When the bleed settings are set to zero, even if you've extended artwork beyond the boundary of the artboard, the art clips to the edge of the artboard. Additionally, if you specify a bleed setting, you'll need to print to a paper size large enough to display the page size and the bleed as well. For more information on bleeds, see the sidebar, "Take Heed: Add Bleed."

Take Heed: Add Bleed

In order to print art all the way to the edge of a sheet, a printer uses a larger sized sheet than the finish size (trim size) and after printing, they cut the paper down to size. Printers can't print all the way to the edge of a page because a certain amount of space is needed for gripper space (space for the press to "grab" the sheet of paper). Additionally, if this space wern't there, the ink could run off the sheet and onto the press causing smudging on other sheets.

When a printer trims the paper to the final size, the paper may shift while being cut, and if your image only comes up to the border of the trim size, you might end up seeing a bit of white near the edge of the paper. To avoid this, printers need bleed, or extra image space. If the artwork extends beyond the edges of the trim size, even if the cutter is off a bit, you'll still get color all the way to the edge of your sheet.

As a designer, it's important to leave enough image when you're cropping photos to allow for bleed (Figure 11.6 ). Talk to your printer if you have questions, but most printers ask for anywhere from .125 to .25 inches of bleed. If printers don't have enough image space to add bleed, they may need to trim the paper to a slightly smaller size.

Figure 11.6. If your design calls for artwork that prints to the edge of a page, make sure you add bleed before sending it off to the printer.

The Output Print Panel

The Output panel in the Print dialog is a prepress operator's dream come true. With the ability to specify color separations and control the behavior of inks, a print service provider can output Illustrator files with confidence. Illustrator supports three different printing modes, each of which is used for a different workflow (Figure 11.7 ):

Composite. When you choose the Composite setting, Illustrator sends a single composite of the artwork, with all colors appearing on the same page, to the printer or RIP (raster image processor). This is the setting you would use to create any kind of black and white or grayscale printout, as well as any color proof printout.

Separations (Host-Based). When you choose the Separations (Host-Based) setting, Illustrator (the host) separates the artwork into the required number of plates (specified in the Document Ink Options settings mentioned shortly) and sends each plate to the printer or RIP as a separate page. This is the setting you use if you want to proof color-separated artwork. A prepress operator or printer also uses this setting to create final film or plates from your artwork.

A RIP, or raster image processor, is the software in a printer, image setter, or platesetter, that converts all art into dots so that it can be printed.

In-RIP Separations. When you choose the In-RIP Separations setting, Illustrator sends a single composite of the artwork to the RIP so that the RIP itself can perform the color separation instead of Illustrator. All of the Document Ink Options and separation-specific settings become available so that you can still control the inks that will print on the composite. This is the setting you use if you want to take advantage of proprietary trapping, screening, and separations software present in your RIP.

Figure 11.7. Printing a composite is perfect for proofing (left). Printing separations is required for printing colors on a printing press (right).

Specifying Color Separations

Understanding Overprints" later in this chapter for more information on overprinting.

In the Document Ink Options section of the Output panel, you can specify which plates are sent to the printer and what settings each plate uses (Figure 11.8 ). Colors that appear with a printer icon on the far left print. To prevent an ink from printing, click the printer icon to remove it. Inks that appear with a four-color icon separate as process colors. Inks that appear with a solid color icon print to their own plate as a spot (custom) color. Clicking a solid color icon causes just that color to separate as a process color. Additionally, you can specify custom Frequency, Angle, and Dot Shape settings for each ink individually.

Figure 11.8. The different icons that display in the Document Ink Options section of the Output panel indicate how the inks print.

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The Graphics Print Panel

Chapter 7,

3D and Other Live Effects , the resolution at which Live Effects are rasterized is determined by the setting in the Document Raster Effects Resolution dialog. Here in the Graphics panel of the Print dialog, Illustrator displays the current setting in that dialog, allowing you to double check to make sure the setting is indeed correct for printing (Chapter 7, changing the resolution setting may change the appearance of your artwork. To change the resolution setting, click the Done button in the Print dialog and choose Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings. You can then return to the Print dialog to print your file.

Figure 11.9. Although you can't change the Document Raster Effects Resolution setting from the Print dialog, the Graphics panel does alert you to the current setting in case you need to make a change.

If you have problems printing Illustrator files to older print devices, try checking the Compatible Gradient and Gradient Mesh Printing option.

The Color Management Print Panel

The topic of color management really requires a book of its own. In fact, if you really want to learn everything there is to know about color management, you should check out

Real World Color Management, Second Edition , by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy, and Fred Bunting (Peachpit Press, 2004).

Within the scope of this book (the one you are now reading), however, here are some brief explanations for the settings found in the Color Management panel of the Print dialog:

Document Profile. The Document Profile displays the color profile that is currently embedded in the file. If you didn't manually choose one, the profile you see here is the profile that is chosen in the Color Settings dialog.

Color Handling. The Color Handling setting allows you to determine whether Illustrator will perform any necessary color adjustments (based on the chosen printer profile), or whether your printer will handle any required conversion on its own.

Printer Profile. When the Color Handling setting is set to Let Illustrator determine colors, the Printer Profile setting allows you to specify a profile for your printer. This gives Illustrator the information it needs to change colors so they look correct on your printer. If the Color Handling setting is set to Let PostScript printer determine colors, the Printer Profile setting is not applicable.

Rendering Intent. If there are colors in your document that cannot be reproduced on the chosen output device, those colors are considered

out of gamut and must be converted to colors that will reproduce on the output device. There are different methods for converting these colors, and the Rendering Intent setting determines the method used. The most commonly used method, Relative Colorimetric, moves out of gamut colors to the closest possible color that will print on the device. It also makes adjustments to other colors so that colors appear to be accurate. The Absolute Colorimetric setting only adjusts out of gamut colors and may result in

posterization , where many shades of similar colors are used. The Perceptual method shifts colors so that they appear correct relative to each other, but it may not represent colors as being the most accurate match to the original values. The Saturation method enhances colors and makes them more vibrant and most suitable for business presentations where bright colors are more important than accurate colors.

Preserve CMYK Numbers. The Preserve CMYK Numbers setting is only active when Color Handling is set to the Let PostScript printer determine colors option. With Preserve CMYK Numbers active, color values will remain untouched in native artwork and text components of your file.

The Advanced Print Panel

The Advanced panel in the Print dialog gives you control over important settings like overprinting and transparency flattening.

If your document contains overprint settings, you can choose from one of three different settings to control overprint behavior:

Preserve. The Preserve option leaves all overprints intact in your file.

The Print as Bitmap option is available for non-PostScript printers only and rasterizes all artwork in your file for printing.

Discard. The Discard option strips your file of any overprint commands. Those of you who have proprietary production systems or advanced trapping software in your RIPs will find this option useful. Rather than use a designer's overprint settings, the trapping software applies and determines all overprint behavior instead.

Simulate. The Simulate option, available only when printing composite proofs, simulates overprints in the printout, giving the correct appearance of the final output in the proof.

If your document contains transparency, you can choose from a list of predefined Transparency Flattener Presets. Illustrator ships with three presets called Low Resolution, Medium Resolution, and High Resolution, but you can also define your own by choosing Edit > Transparency Flattener Presets. For detailed information about what these settings are used for and what the differences between them are, see "The Truth About Transparency," later in this chapter.

Understanding Overprints," later in the chapter, to learn more about overprints.