It's part of my everyday job as a print/press artworker, but I'm not brilliant at it. Most of the time I work on motoring images of cars in 'lifestyle' poses and 'in-limbo' white studio backgrounds. And most of the images we use have been previously converted by a professional third-party company.

My question is; Does anyone have a good, tried-and-tested set of steps on how to convert a standard 300dpi litho-ready image to conform to newsprint specs, keeping and enhancing the detail of the car in keeping with the colour of the paperstock used (ISO Profile "ISOnewspaper26v4.icc" - or similar).

The old phrase for doing this was "Schaife-line" or "Pro-Repro" (SP??)

Have attached a before and after image of a 'litho' image to the left and a 'newsprint' conversion to the right. These are from the third-party company. Would be interested if anyone here has some experience of doing this professionally and delighted if they wanted to share some insights.

cheers,
N.

Neillo

I have no idea of the ideal settings or workflow. I'll be watching this thread for answers from the exports. You've posed an interesting question.

UCR is usually used for newsprint...here is a link to a page that has muc information on output…

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/Printing-to-Press.shtml

I've done quite a bit of newsprint conversions in the recent past. I had the fortune to have a newsprint cmyk to convert to for the limits and the luck to be able to proof on newsprint to test the results. Generally, the approved 4 color was converted to newsprint, bkg copied, an enormous amount of USM applied (if it looks bad on screen, ie. too much, it's probably perfect for the dot gain in np). Then bring up the 3/4 tones and blacks. Proof and compare to approved 4 color for detail, etc. You come to know what to expect after awhile like because the paper is so yellow you are going to adjust x, etc.

edit: from eyeballing your examples, I'd guess that you will have to bring up your blacks still to keep separation and sharpen like no tomorrow.

ant is def right with the 3/4's and k's...... ucr can make a very flat/dull looking image. additional tweaking is almost always needed after the ucr file is set.
in my expeerience anyway.

just remember, new paper…ink will spread a lot-->so dots will enlarge and image will get heavier.

Thanks for the tips all.

KR1156… great link you gave me, lots of good info on that page. Many thanks.

N.

It's part of my everyday job as a print/press artworker, but I'm not brilliant at it. Most of the time I work on motoring images of cars in 'lifestyle' poses and 'in-limbo' white studio backgrounds. And most of the images we use have been previously converted by a professional third-party company.

My question is; Does anyone have a good, tried-and-tested set of steps on how to convert a standard 300dpi litho-ready image to conform to newsprint specs, keeping and enhancing the detail of the car in keeping with the colour of the paperstock used (ISO Profile "ISOnewspaper26v4.icc" - or similar).

T

Convert to Profile > Custom CMYK

Black Ink Limit: 80

Total Ink Limit: 240

UCR

Dot Gain > Curves

Set the 50% value as follows:

Cyan and Magenta: 84%
Yellow: 82%
Black: 87%

It's never enough to set shadow density and max black. Dot gain is the real killer, and if it's not compensated for, you will get mud. Trying to figure it out with curves is a guaranteed formula for severe color shifts, and it's pointless when Photoshop does the heavy lifting for you. This conversion will get you in the ball park. It almost always brings in the black levels lower than the max set, so you have room to boost the shadows without running up against the dMax limits, but if, for some reason, you have large areas that are hitting the 240 mark and want to add some more black for weight, use a selective color layer targeting blacks and pull about 7-9 C and 3 or 4 M and Y out. There's no detail in those channels anyway so a careful contrast curve in black will clarify shadow detail overall and keep you under the limit.

If you go to Color Settings and choose Custom CMYK for the default CMYK profile choice, you can use the above settings, name the profile, then choose Save CMYK and you will now have a newsprint profile that you can call up with Convert to Profile.

Usually there are three fundamental specs that prepress shops refer to: Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today. The first two are more or less interchangeable, with the exception of the dMax. I've seen 260 used rather than the more standard 240. USA Today uses a higher quality stock and thus has less dot-gain. The custom values in the dot-gain curves come from Dan Margulis' Color Theory Forum. A standard value of 30 works well enough for USA Today.

EDGEWORK !!

Man, thanks for the reply—you've obviously got experience in these matters and I really appreciate the time you've taken to go through and write a step-by-step guide for me.

I'll be trying this out and will try and put some examples up for people to view—although, with no way of proofing them onto newsprint stock for tweaking/improving (we're not lucky enough in work to have this), then I guess no matter what I produce would be pure theory.

Again, many thanks.
N.

EDGEWORK !!

Man, thanks for the reply—you've obviously got experience in these matters and I really appreciate the time you've taken to go through and write a step-by-step guide for me.

I'll be trying this out and will try and put some examples up for people to view—although, with no way of proofing them onto newsprint stock for tweaking/improving (we're not lucky enough in work to have this), then I guess no matter what I produce would be pure theory.

Again, many thanks.
N.

Keep in mind that, as always when using Convert to Profile, your screen image will not change, since Photoshop is trying to reproduce the same image in the new profile environment. When you save the image you will see that the profile specs are the ones that will be appended to the image if you tag it.

To see what the conversion actually does, go to Assign Profile and reassign whatever default CMYK profile you use. You will see the drastic reduction in midtones that has taken place in anticipation of the dot gain that crappy newsprint stock will produce.