Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2020

How To Make Printing Ink

  Introduction Printing ink is so much more than just the black stuff that you put on a page. It has been around for thousands of years, and it's been used in everything from newspaper presses to digital printers. As you can see, we're not talking about offset printing ink which is oil based. I want to have a little fun and talk about how you can make your own ink for your printer.  At home! Ready? Ingredients You will need the following ingredients: Soot (5 tbsp) : This is as purest as it gest. You can make the soot yourself by holding a glass up to a flame. This will allow you to slowly accumulate the soot. Water (2 tbsp): For the base of your ink, use distilled water so that you don't introduce any impurities into the mix. Distilled water is also easier to clean up than tap water because there are no minerals or residue left behind from tap water. Alcohol (2 tbsp) (grain alcohol): This ingredient works as a preservative for your ink and allows it to last for several mo

Dot Gain in Photoshop - What it means.

The dot gain value in Photoshop is the compensation for something that happens when a page is actually printed on a commercial printing press. The resulting printed image turns out darker than intended.  This is because an image is printed in dots and their diameter increases during the pre-press and printing process.  There are several factors that can effect this. Here are just a few: properties of the ink the shade of the substrate, usually paper the color of the ink being printed  Photoshop makes adjustments for this so that the file you output for the offset press will match what is shown on your computer screen. How Photoshop and a printing press differ. There is a difference between what Photoshop shows you on computer screen and the final printed product.  On a computer monitor, there is extremely minimal dot gain.  Photoshop knows this and presents to you on the screen the image as you have adjusted it.  The screen can change colors by adjusting the brightnes