One of the most common ways print overheads are sent soaring
is down to silly errors in document processing. Most businesses use Microsoft
Word, others use open source suites such as Apache OpenOffice, and for those working
remotely - file sharing can be used, too. When that happens it can wreak havoc
on printed documents for a number of reasons.
To ensure you can minimise the cost of print, consider the following,
and preferably have a printed document for your staff to refer to these common
print errors so they don’t waste any more consumables on poorly formatted
documents.
10 checks to do prior to clicking print
1) Get the MS office setup configured properly
The most common document processor is that of Microsoft
Office. It covers a suite of features including PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and
Publisher.
There is a problem with it though. It has not been designed
to produce press ready documents ready for print. On occasion, some
manipulation is required. This is due to conflicts between the print driver and
the Microsoft coding. Word can override the print driver and cause the output
to vary in the margin size, or even paper size.
If that happens, Microsoft has this
workaround, however, another option is to convert the file to PDF. Most
commercial grade printers recognise PDF properties and do not allow the file
commands to override print driver settings.
Some MFPs can handle the file conversion, but there are some
units that can’t. If your business MFP does not convert files automatically
prior to printing, the set up will need altered.
Page sizes may also need adjusting.
The default for most MS Office documents are set to American
page sizes. One of the most basic errors to occur when new hardware is
installed on site is the default MS Word being set to US. It’s a different page
setup size to UK print.
Whatever size of paper you are printing to; always check the
page margins and size are set to UK A3, A4, A5, or any other custom size you
require.
Let’s face it, reaching the bottom of the page with only a
few lines left to run is much easier to repeatedly strike the enter key and hit
the new page we need for the next section of the document. It’s a rookie
mistake, and a lazy one at that, albeit for the effectiveness of productivity.
Many a person has this habit because it is faster, but prior
to printing, the editing stage of document production must include inserting
page breaks where appropriate.
Otherwise, any training manuals or other documents printed
will have a messed up index. The page numbers will not correspond with the
table of contents. Chapters will run into each other and the entire document
can be ruined. That can be a costly error when mass printing volumes. All
because of one simple tweak in the editing stage being skipped.
3) Don’t get fancy with fonts
Custom fonts are great for presentation purposes, but if
they are not on the hard drive of the networked PC/computing device and
printer, it will automatically switch to one that is.
When this gets disastrous is when documents have been edited
in different processors through file sharing. Employees can do some work on
their PC at their workstation, share it via Google Drive and log in to do some
adjustments or insert some information and it’s inserted in a different font.
If that font isn’t recognised, you could have a print output with different
fonts which won’t look right at all.
4) Know the difference between screen quality
and print quality
There is a huge difference between these two. A screen grab
can look pixel perfect on your monitor, but print it out and you’ll scratch
your head wondering what you did wrong. It’s simply pixels playing tricks on
you.
Monitors can display quality graphics at 72 PPI (Pixels Per
Inch). Printers cannot give a quality print with a low pixel amount to work
from. For a quality image print, you need 300 ppi, although you may be able to
get away with 150.
This is important to note because Clipart graphics and
images downloaded from the web are not print optimised. You may be able to scale
an image down in size, but you cannot scale it up. Even using sophisticated
image manipulation software you will not get quality results.
Images
for print must be high resolution to start with. That’s why there’s an
entire market for high quality digital cameras. They produce imagery capable of
press print quality. Downloaded images do not do that because they are mostly
compressed in file size to save on memory.
5) Transparent backgrounds are a no go
Unless you are trained in graphic design and know the
technical intricacies of watermarking documents, do not attempt to do this. The
only exception is if it is already installed within the Watermarks
Gallery of MS Word. If you choose to do a custom watermark using a
transparent background, you can find the print output will not render it, and
instead produce a crosshatch pattern across the entire document.
This will happen if the printer driver doesn’t recognise the
syntax that’s been inserted into the document.
6) Know the file formats the printer understands
Files can be saved as many formats but save in something the
printer doesn’t recognise and you’ll have a hard time achieving a quality
output. You need the input to correspond with the effective output. The
universally industry standard is Adobe Acrobat
Portable Document Format (PDF).
Converting to PDF
reduces file sizes and maximises the digital memory capacity of the printers.
Generally, you can expect PDF, Tiff, Jpeg, and EPS to be printer
recognisable file formats on many colour MFPs.
7) Chose the right print quality for the job
This is one of the most effective ways to cut costs fast. In
an unmanaged print
environment, the first run will be done on the highest resolution, which
will soar the cost of print.
When you send a print job to any printer, you have options
for the quality you require. If you’re only requiring a test run to find out if
the document will print okay, then you do not need to print on the highest
resolution possible.
There is a reason the settings have a low quality print
option and that is to print drafts. It will give you an overview of how your
final document will look. This is the best setting to alert you if you have the
page margins set up wrong, if the enter key has been used instead of page breaks
and that the page numbers correspond to the index in the document.
When printing any first draft document, select low
resolution. That can be anywhere from 72 – 150 dpi which is screen quality
only. When you’re satisfied the document will print as you want it to, then opt
for the high resolution option, which could be anywhere upwards of 600 dpi.
The higher the resolution, the higher the cost of print, and
the faster you’ll burn through toner kits, or ink cartridges if your business
still uses them.
8) Set Desktop Publishing Software settings to
align with the printer
For businesses designing their own posters, or colour
brochures, and pretty much anything that requires colour printing, you need to
set the DTP to CMYK colour mode. As you may or may not know, graphic design has
two colour
systems. The CYMK model stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key [black].
The RGB colour model is light based representing red, green, and blue. That
only works on screens because it’s based on light colour and not on ink.
As much as technology has advanced over the years, it is
impossible to produce colour out of light. That requires ink and that’s why you
need to have your graphics designed with the CYMK colour system enabled. It’s
the only way to print images.
9) Know your image limitations
Before you even consider printing a colour image, you need
to know if it’s going to look horrendous before you send the job to the
printer. The way to tell is the image resolution.
As previously mentioned, you cannot scale images up in size.
If you have an image designed for a postcard (A6) paper size, and the DPI is
300, if you double that to fill an A4 sheet, you will cut the resolution in
half.
Whenever you scale an image up in size, it reduces the
resolution. The print output result will be pixelated, and not the sharp and
crisp image that you see on your screen. Any raster images you are working with
- ensure they are a minimum of 300 dpi when sending to print.
In terms of image
size, there’s a reason the government’s
traffic-sign images are supplied to professionals in two formats. Jpeg, and
EPS (Encapsulated PostScript). The
majority of commercial printers recognise Jpeg file format, but only top
quality printers will have EPS file comprehension. If you need to scale images,
you need a printer with EPS functionality; otherwise, you’ll have a difficult
time producing large poster size quality prints.
10) Always account for bleeds when the feature
is enabled
Full bleed
printers are important for colour brochures, poster printing and similar
graphical print jobs. The margins can be up to five millimetres of a
differential to the original document you sent to print.
The bleed feature is designed to enable right to the edge
printing. You’ll know yourself when you print a document, or even use your home
printer for a photo printout, you’ll have a white border surrounding it.
The bleed is there to get rid of that white border.
Where the problem creeps up is when people forget about the
bleed feature and print a colour brochure with text on the edge of the
document, or even page numbers. The printer will print to a larger size of
paper, but once it’s been processed it will then be trimmed to ensure the
colour does indeed run right to the edge of the paper. If you forget to account
for that, you will find page numbers being cropped out, or even text cut
completely out the document.
