InDesign® CS4 Bible

Chapter 28. Preparing for Color Prepress

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Setting color calibration defaults

• Setting up a monitor's color profile

• Applying color profiles to imported images

• Altering color profiles for objects and documents

• Applying color profiles during printing

• Proofing on-screen

• Understanding color traps

• Defining and applying trapping presets

Since their invention in the mid-1980s, desktop-publishing programs have broadened their features to cover more and more color publishing needs. Many of the color-oriented features have caused consternation among professional color separators and printers who have seen amateurs make a tough job worse or ruin an acceptable piece of work. This situation is familiar to anyone in desktop publishing in the early years when the typographic profession looked on in horror at amateurs publishing documents without understanding tracking, hyphenation, and many other fundamental areas.

Some programs have added more and more high-end color prepress features. InDesign is one of those and offers the following: two types of trapping engines; the ability to control trapping of individual objects and pages; the ability to apply color models to imported pictures to help the printer adjust the output to match the original picture's color intent; and support for composite workflow, which creates files that have a version for output on a proofing printer such as a color inkjet and a version for output on an imagesetter as film negatives or directly to plate.

The perfect scenario ...