CREATING SPOT COLOUR ADS
Overview
Reproducing advertisements for newsprint differs significantly from reproducing advertisements for magazines. While
printing in Pique Newsmagazine is among the best available, it differs in quality from publications printed on coated paper.
Why designing for newsprint is different
The fundamental difference between newsprint and regular magazine stock is that on newsprint all the fibers are
exposed and unsealed. When ink is applied to uncoated stock, the exposed fibers absorb a lot more ink, which
spreads outward into the fibers causing dot gain, making the finished output look darker than originally intended. In
addition to dot gain, the relative darkness of the newsprint causes further ‘dulling’ which needs to be compensated for
during the design process using the tips below.
What is cmyk?
Computer monitors emit colour as RGB (red, green, blue) light. RGB colour system is only suitable for screen
reproduction such as computer monitors and TV screens. This is not suitable color matching for printing or to colour
match from, as each screen may represent colours differently. What may look fine on one screen, may look completely
different in print.
Printers use CMYK (Cyan, magenta, yellow and black) inks, to recreate the colours you see emitted as light from your
monitor. Colours you see on your screen will look different in print because it is an ink representation of the screen
(transmitted light) colour and there is a limitation to the number of colours CMYK can reproduce.
A traditional newspaper press has four metal plates made up, one for each of these colours. During the printing
process the paper rolls over these plates and the ink is transferred to the page in varying amounts. These amounts
are defined in percentages in your software. For example, a dark blue might be made up of 100% cyan and 100%
magenta, also written as C100 M100 Y0 K0.
Spot Colour
Pique Newsmagazine does not use Pantone / specialty inks. We are able to offer our clients a more affordable rate
for limited colour through an agreement with our printer. Spot colour ads must use a one-colour black for all black
elements, with the addition of only one cmyk colour of the client’s choice.
CORRECT PREPARATION OF SPOT COLOUR
The best way to set up your spot colour ad for the Pique is to only use two colour swatches: Black (K) and your chosen
cmyk swatch. Your ad should be built as B&W, then add one cmyk swatch to specific areas. These areas work best as
flat colour.
» For instructions on how to set up images for spot colour, see ‘Images’ section.
1
CREATING SPOT COLOUR ADS
What is one-colour black?
All blacks in spot colour ads have to be one-colour. This means the black is made up of only the black plate (K). Ads
that use blacks made up of CMYK will need to be converted. This may create a range of problems. To check if your
black is one-colour black:
» In InDesign select Window > Output > Separations Preview > View: Separations or;
In Illustrator, select Window > Separations Preview > View: Separations
next to Black. Whatever remains visible is not a one-colour black and needs to be converted. If
Click on the
everything disappears, your black & white ad is set up correctly.
Tone Reproduction
The relationship between tones in an original and tones in the printed work is known as tone reproduction and is often
called contrast. Because of tone compression, newsprint reproduction has significantly less contrast than the original or
magazine publications (SWOP).
When designing an ad using only Black (K) plus one spot colour it is important to make sure that the shades of grey
used provide good contrast for your content, and that the spot colour contrasts well with black (For instance, dark
colours with a lot of black/cyan in them are too similar to black and do not work well as a spot colour)
If you are converting a colour ad to greyscale, be aware that when colours which work together as CMYK may result
in being too close in tone when converted to greyscale. For best results, ads should be designed as greyscale from
the beginning, or converted manually within the software which created the ad, with each colour being considered
individually.
TIPS FOR GOOD TONE REPRODUCTION
» Try to avoid grey type on a grey background. Your type may become unreadable. Try to stick to black or white type.
For a grey background behind 100% Black type, 20% Black is recommended.
» Increase contrast of images and lighten midtones/shadows
Highlight areas must have at least a 2% dot in order to reproduce detail. Anything below will not hold and have no dot.
Midtone areas include a range of 35% to 65% and have the most dot gain (30%). The majority of black should be
in a range of 25% to 35% to maximize reproduction detail.
Shadow areas must have less than 75% to 80% dot in order to reproduce detail. The majority of black should be in
a range of 55% to 75% to maximize reproduction detail.
» A minimum of 30% contrast between foreground and background is recommended
Mechanical Dot Gain
Not all dots grow at the same degree. The greatest growth is in the midtone. This becomes significant owing to the
high absorption characteristics of newsprint and the speed (copies / hour) of the non-heatset offset presses.
Optical dot gain is caused in part by the relative darkness of the newsprint itself: the brightness (or whiteness) of the
paper. You cannot eliminate optical nor mechanical dot gain. You must compensate for this effect in your images
and flat tints. Without the required change, your color ad will print heavy and muddy looking. Mechanical dot gain for
Pique Newsmagazine is approximately 25%.
2
CREATING SPOT COLOUR ADS
TIPS FOR DOT GAIN COMPENSATION
» Lighten the midtones and shadows of images by up to 20%
» Sharpen images slightly more than desired sharpness result.
» If matching a specific colour, the colour for newsprint should have up to 20% black removed to reproduce as per
the original, and should not exceed 240%.
» For type compensation, please see the ‘Type’ section.
Ink Coverage
It’s important to keep an eye on the ink coverage in your file. Too much ink applied to a page can cause problems with
drying, and could smear or soak the paper.
The printer is adding a layer of ink for every colour specified (C or M or Y or K) so if you specify 90% cyan plus
85% magenta plus 80% black that page is going to covered in three layers of ink. Newsprint can’t cope with that.
The maximum ink coverage for newsprint is 240% but to be on the safe side, we reccommend staying well below
that. 100% black is fine and will produce a good result. 90% cyan plus 85% magenta plus 80% black and you risk
overloading the page with ink, causing showthrough to the other side of the page and ink rubbing off onto facing
pages, especially for ads with large blocks of colour.
Type
These key points will help your type look crisp and legible.
» Stick to 8pt and above. Anything under 6pt will not be legible.
» Use 100%K black for body text – using your spot colour for text under 12pt bold can cause registration problems
and is not suitable for newsprint.
BLACK TYPE
All black type should be set to overprint.
InDesign: Window > Output > Attributes > Overprint Fill or you can change the overprint settings in Preferences >
Appearance of Black > CHECK Overprint [Black] swatch at 100%.
Illustrator: Window > Attributes > Overprint Fill
TINTED BLACK TYPE
» Type less than 50% Black should be no smaller than 14 pts.
» Type tinted to a lighter shade of black should be at least 40% lighter than the background.
» Text 80% or more will reproduce similarly to 100%.
DROPOUT (REVERSE) TYPE
» Dropout type from a coloured background should be at least 12pt. in a bold sans serif typeface – any smaller and
dot gain may make it illegible.
» For dropout type on a black background, the type should be at least 8pt. bold sans-serif typeface.
» Using thicker fonts for reverse type will help it stand out and minimise dot gain.
3
CREATING SPOT COLOUR ADS
SCANNED TYPE OR TYPE SAVE AS AN IMAGE FILE (JPEG, TIFF, ETC)
» We don’t recommend saving text as a JPEG as it will be screened at 100L; therefore, it can look blurry in print.
Rather than creating your text in Photoshop and saving it as an image file, it’s better to type the text directly into
InDesign (or Illustrator).
Images
Images should be supplied at 300dpi. A minimum of 150dpi is acceptable if the image is at 100% of the dimension
required in print.
General tips for adjusting your image for newsprint
» Lighten the midtones and shadows by around 20% (More might be required for dark images). Your image should
look slightly lighter than the expected printed output.
» Sharpen images slightly more than desired sharpness result.
» Don’t blow out the highlights of the image during the lightening process or the detail in those areas will be lost.
CONVERTING COLOUR IMAGES TO GREYSCALE
Be careful when converting dark photographs or illustrations – often these will print extremely muddy if not converted
properly. Pique recommends using Image > Adjustments > Black & White (Your original image needs to be RGB not
CMYK format to use this feature) and use the colour sliders to control the contrast, specifically focusing on lightening
the saturated areas (midtones and shadows). Adjusting individual colours will create a better greyscale result. Note
that you will still need to convert the image to greyscale after the above adjustment: Image > Mode > Greyscale.
CONVERTING COLOUR IMAGES TO DUOTONE/MONOTONE
Monotones are grayscale images printed with a single, non-black (Spot) ink. Duotones are grayscale images printed
with two inks. In these images, colored inks, rather than different shades of gray, are used to reproduce tinted grays.
Duotones increase the tonal range of a grayscale image.
Duotones using a spot colour for the highlight color produce an image with a slight tint which significantly increases
the dynamic range of the image.
Because duotones use different color inks to reproduce different gray levels, they are treated in Photoshop as singlechannel, 8-bit, grayscale images. In Duotone mode, you do not have direct access to the individual image channels (as in
RGB, CMYK, and Lab modes). Instead, you manipulate the channels through the curves in the Duotone Options dialog box.
» Convert the image to grayscale by choosing Image > Mode > Grayscale. Only 8-bit grayscale images can be
converted to duotones.
» Choose Image > Mode > Duotone.
» In the Duotone Options dialog box, select Preview to preview the image.
» For the Type option, select Monotone or Duotone.
» Click the color box (the solid square) to open the color picker, then click the Color Libraries button and enter the
CMYK values of your spot colour.
» Click the curve box next to the color ink box and adjust the duotone curve for each ink color.
» Click OK.
4
CREATING SPOT COLOUR ADS
Exporting duotone images to other applications
» To export a duotone image to a page-layout application, you must first save the image in EPS or PDF format.
Remember to name custom colors using the appropriate suffix so that the importing application can recognize
them. Otherwise, the application may not print the colors correctly, or it may not print the image at all.
CONVERTING COLOUR IMAGES TO GREYSCALE WITH A SPOT CHANNEL
An image with a spot channel would be created when there is a greyscale image which requires spot colour applied
only in one specific area.
» Convert your image to greyscale.
» Add a spot channel by choosing New Spot Channel from the Channels panel menu.
Note: The Solidity and color choice options in the first dialogue box affect only on-screen previews and composite
prints. They have no effect on printed separations.
» In the New Spot Channel dialog box, click the Color box. Then click the Color Libraries button and enter the CMYK
values of your spot colour.
» Save your image as an EPS DCS 2.0 file format or PDF. This ensures all your blacks won’t be converted to cmyk.
Tip for spot channel images
» Spot colors are overprinted on top of the grayscale image. If you want the spot colour to knockout the black ink
underneath it, you need to delete that area from the Gray channel.
Fonts
All fonts should be outlined for final advertisement. Please provide screen and printer fonts for color ads sent if
modifications are required.
Note: Pique Newsmagazine does not take responsibility for any modifications requested to a pdf where fonts are not supplied.
Transparency
Transparency such as layer modes, drop shadows and opacity under 100% can be problematic. Always flatten
transparency before submitting your ad.
Full Page Ads
Please keep all content (logos, text, images and keyline on bordered ads) within the live area. Anything outside the live
area is at risk of being trimmed. The trim can move up to 0.2” and still be within industry specifications, therefore the
full 0.25” bleed is required.
5
CREATING SPOT COLOUR ADS
Distiller Settings
Pique Newsmagazine will accept any high resolution pdf, but the following settings are preferred.
DISTILLER 9+
General Tab
Compatibility = Acrobat 4.0
Object compression = Off
Rotate Pages = Individually
Binding = Left
Resolution = 2400 dpi
Select “All Pages”
Embedded Thumbnails = UNCHECKED
Optimize For Fast Web View = UNCHECKED
Default Page Size = 9.5 x 12.875 Inches
Images Tab
COLOR & GRAYSCALE IMAGES
Bicubic Down sampling to 200 ppi
For Images above 300 ppi
Compression = Auto JPEG
Quality = Maximum
MONOCHROME IMAGES
Bicubic Down sampling to 600
For Images above 900
Compression = CCITT Group 4
Anti-Alias = Off
POLICY = Cancel jobs when below 100 for Color &
Grayscale, 600 for Monochrome
Fonts Tab
Embed all fonts = CHECKED
Subset = CHECKED AT 100%
When embedding fails = Cancel Job
Color Tab
Settings File = NONE
Color Management Policies = Convert all colours to
CMYK
Document Rendering Intent = Preserve
WORKING SPACES
Gray = Dot Gain 20%
RGB = ColorMatch RGB
CMYK = U.S. Web Uncoated v2
Preserve Under Color Removal & Black Generation =
CHECKED
Transfer Functions = Remove
Preserve Halftone = UNCHECKED
Advanced Tab
Select the following only ...
Convert gradients to Smooth Shades
Preserve Level 2 copy page
Preserve Overprint Settings
Overprint is nonzero
Save Adobe PDF Settings Inside PDF
Process DCS comments
Preserve EPS Info
Preserve document Info from DCS
Resize page and center EPS
Standards Tab
Compliance Standard = PDF/X–1a (Acrobat 5
Compatible)
When not compliant = Cancel Job
Set Trim Box to Media Box with a .01 offset all around
Set BleedBox to MediaBox
Output intent Profile Name = U.S. Web Uncoated v2
6
CREATING SPOT COLOUR ADS
Submission Checklist
Before submitting your ad to Pique Newsmagazine, please ensure
you’ve completed the following (if applicable):
All Images high resolution greyscale, duotone or spot channel EPS
All fonts outlined
Transparency flattened
No Spot /Pantone colour swatches
No CMYK blacks
No reverse type in a spot colour area under 12pt bold
No spot colour type under 12pt bold
No reverse type in a one-colour black area under 8 pt bold
PDF made to correct ad dimensions with no printer’s marks
File named with client name and intended Pique run issue / date
Full page ads:
All content is within the live area
Full page ads with bleed:
All content is within the live area
Bleed is set to 0.25” with no printer’s marks
If you have further questions...
Please contact our production manager Anja Werner at:
anja@piquenewsmagazine.com | 604.938.0202 ext 234