The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book (Non-Designer's Series)

Williams and Cohen commence their tour of scanning and printing by explaining how to plan your project. They begin by encouraging you to choose your paper, colors, graphics, binding, number of folds and copies, and printing methods. Then they introduce you to basic DTP and business issues like resolution, paper size, print area, cost of goods, fonts, and PostScript. Their highly rudimentary approach even includes a discussion of the type of printing device necessary to complete your project and whether you will need to use an inkjet, laser, dye-sublimation, or thermal wax printer. From there, they look to the essentials of commercial printing, finding a print shop, working within a budget, and using processes such as letterpress, flexography, and gravure.

Subsequent chapters delve into computer issues like software applications commonly used for DTP projects and how they handle color modes, raster images, resolution, vector images, and file formats. You also tackle color issues such as process color printing, using spot colors and duotones, and specifying the number of colors in a publication.

Image acquisition plays a big role in completing any project, and the authors provide helpful tips for using scanners, digital cameras, Kodak Photo CD-ROMs, stock photography, and clip art. Finally, you study printer topics such as using high-res output, working with service bureaus, determining output specs such as client and delivery information, writing film specs, using printer's marks, understanding resolution and linescreen issues, trapping, and proofing your job. There's also a preflight checklist to help you determine whether you've thought everything through. At the end of the book, you get quizzes or projects for most of the chapters as well as a list of resources for more information. --David Wall

Product Description
For most non-designers, especially beginning desktop publishers, the scanning, prepress, and printing process isn't an intuitive one. Trial and error is often the only way to learn the technical basics of producing professional-looking documents.

If you're tired of learning the hard way, The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book is for you. Using the format that is so popular in Peachpit's best-selling Non-Designer's series, this latest offering, fully cross-platform, provides a multitude of tips, techniques, and design, prepress, and production principles to help create professional-looking documents. Clear instructions and numerous examples cover the entire process of scanning, prepress, and printing.