Hi. I do quite a lot of this kind of work.
What’s your run size? That helps to guess-t-mate which press they would be most likely yo use, but they will tell you. For top quality results, you need to have a good conversation with your printer. They will thank you for it, believe me!
1. Generally YOU decide the binding method but your printer will help you, I’m sure. One thing–what’s your page size? You may need to adjust that for the signature. You will need–likely–12 or 16. They will advise.
2. PDF is the industry standard now. Printers generally prefer (unless the file is plagued with problems their prepress people can’t fix (and charge for). Absolutely check with them. Yes, they generally prefer single pages. You can layout in spreads and break apart in Indd. There’s a super tutorial on this technique right here (use if you have to bleed into the spine). Crossover images are still a pain though.
3. Color management. Omg. That’s a super technical area. I bow to those ink folks. Heres the skinny as I do it. I work with vector and raster and in some complex stuff, both in same piece. Lots of people do, I kmow. So use your Adobe Bridge to sync your colours across your suite applications.
Or do it manually. I do that too sometimes. Find out what colour settings they want. They will tell you. (They will also convert so it’s not that big a deal unless you are a pro, or you need utterly perfect rendering). Anyway, they will let you know what profile
they prefer and you can either load it or if there’s a preset, use it. Also calibrate your monitor. If you have lots of images and a discerning client, this becomes really important. Keep your files clean. Don’t need to embed your color profiles. Their
Prepress workflows often strip these out anyway.
Amazing people and it never fails to boggle my mind. Printing might be one of the last bastions of material meets technology and material wins!
You can also convert colours downstream though. Depends. What range of colour do you need?
They will also let you know what settings they want you to export to your resulting PDF. Kind of Compression. Embed or NOT your fonts. Etc. you can also convert your colour profile here.
In my experience, the high end printers recommend you do all your image processing in PS, including res, size, colour, the gamut. All. Then drop in Indd at 100% for effective res at 300. Unless you are doing a billboard. In which case I use AI p anyway.
Frankly, I have been surprised over and over. Doesn’t seem to matter which print shop I’ve dealt with, they all insist on CMYK in spite of what I’ve learned on this site. Even the super high end guys.
I would most definitely be in touch with your print people. They are, like I said, your friends and, ironically, it’s the designers that DO talk to them who are often the more adept at this amazing skill set. Love to know what the experts say.
Needsless to say, design has become complex enough that web work and print work are so vastly (well, kinda) different, it’s now possible and even advisable to specialize in one.
So says this old bird.
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