Photoshop for first custom plate
Hi, I am finishing up a design for wedding invitations in Photoshop (its my first time using photoshop). I am going to have a plate made with Owosso Graphics and not sure all I need to do before sending it.
I’m not sure if I should use any Alias options for the text, or leave it without? What works best for the plate?
Any other tips about designing a plate, I know NOTHING so any tips would be helpful before I send the file
thanks
I would ask the folks that’ll be making the films. They know best what works for them. Might even be best to leave everything “as is” and send them your .PSD file and let them deal with the text and flattening. There may be more issues than just the text and having the native .PSD gives them the ability to make any necessary changes.
thank you, I just called them and that worked out great
thanks!
Hi ktlee,
I am certainly no expert, but if you happen to have InDesign along with your Photoshop, you might start familiarizing yourself with that, too. It’s better than Photoshop for handling text. I’m a beginner with the Adobe programs, too, but I’ve found that I use InDesign and Illustrator for letterpress text and graphics, and not Photoshop. Any experienced graphic artists out there who can explain the differences?
Barbara
Barb,
Any layout program similar to InDesign, Quark, and Illustrator saves the text at 2400 dpi output resolution. Photoshop saves the text at the resolution of the file, usually 300 dpi. So the type is a rasterized letter as a halftone. In page layout programs it remains linework at 8 times more resolution. You also have much better control of spacing, kerning, alignment, and line spacing.
Vector information such as text and object in programs like Illustrator, indesign and quark has no resolution. It is a mathematical expression of a geometric shape. Resolution is applied to it upon ripping. Rips tend to split vector and contone information into two “sets”, vectors being turned into rasters at the output resolution of the device and contones being kept in a lower resolution typically twice the line screen. When the halftone dot pattern is applied to the contones it is essentially a vector mask of dots applied to the images.
The last two version of Photoshop will make vector based text and objects, tough in experience in a much more complicated way than other programs resulting in large images. Photoshop now also contains the same character and paragraph palette as Illustrator or indesign allowing the same manipulation of text.
Text can be done well in photoshop, what tends to be easier in applications like indesign is the collection of all the needed files for output, especially fonts.