You may see the letters CMYK mentioned with regard to the printing process. They refer to printing ink, and while it may seem to be an acronym for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, on closer inspection you’ll note it does not.

The obvious issue is the letter K which oddly enough stands for the key as in the key plate. Just as with a keystone, the key plate is a crucial part of color reproduction.

In the subtractive color model, the three colors of cyan, magenta and yellow are used in varying amounts to create a gamut that more or less represents all the colors of the rainbow. This is done by the inks subtracting reflected light off the substrate which in our case is white paper.

In theory if you were to combine equal amounts of those three colors what should appear is black, and smaller percentages of equal amounts would create shades of gray. In practice, the impurities of mass-manufactured printing inks will reproduce a dark color, but one that is rarely close to what we would all agree is black.

This is where the key plate comes into play. In printing, the key plate is used with black ink. Since this ink is a purer black than the three process inks can produce added together, images reproduced on press will have richer contrast and darker areas will look neutral

Black ink can be manufactured less expensively than cyan, magenta and yellow so when color separations are made, the three colors are often replaced with certain amounts of black which is an added benefit.

Black ink is also used for type. This has the advantage of producing sharp type with only one impression on press which is a technical challenge if using the three color inks as minor changes in alignment will make a blurred effect that can be hard to read.

So next time you see the letters CMYK, you’ll be a little wiser as to how key the letter K can be in making a good impression in your printed bulletin or newsletter!

LPi held an open house this fall at our Milwaukee, Denver, Cromwell, and Cuyahoga Heights locations.  Many fantastic customers toured our facilities, attended seminars on a variety of LPi products and services, and met other local editors and advertisers.  A big THANK YOU to everyone who joined us!

For those who were unable to attend the event, here is a quick behind-the-scenes look at the Milwaukee center’s prepress department.  Consider it a “virtual open house.”
Prepress is responsible for making sure your publications are printed and delivered on time.  We have several different roles in this department:  customer service, tech support, design and processing.

Customer Service

Customer Service is our first point of contact for new customers, and also your source for information on scheduling, delivery, quantity, account changes and hardbound books.  Our customer service representatives are cheerful, outgoing individuals who love to chat with and assist new and existing customers.

Tech Support

Technical Support Representatives are our problem solvers, ready to jump into action with a friendly phone call and the click of a mouse to help resolve computer-related issues.  They provide training and assistance on a variety of programs and software.

Graphic Design

Graphic Designers are the creatives who work with fonts, colors, and graphics in order to lay out beautiful templates, directories, special covers and flyers to fit your needs.

Processing

Processers are the magic-makers behind the scenes, working directly with tech support and the press operators to ensure that your files are received after you submit them to us and adjusted when necessary to print correctly.

Now that you know a little more about our prepress team, we’d love to get to know you better as well!  Please don’t hesitate to call or email to touch base and introduce yourself.  Looking forward to connecting with more of our editors and advertisers as we work with you to “Connect Your Community.”

One of the most convenient ways of keeping an even structure in Microsoft Publisher is to use tabs in your margin bar at the top of your document. This makes placing detailed information more visually pleasing and easy to understand.  Pressing Tab by default gives you a gap of about a quarter of an inch in a document. Generally, this can cause a text box to unevenly place text.

(As a side note, it’s always best to set up your tabs FIRST Before placing in text. But for this demonstration we will use already placed text for visual purposes. if you have already placed text and want to use tabs, simply highlight all the text you want to use tabs with!)

Let’s organize this text by spacing out this information using tabs.  Since we have three segments of text we will tell publisher to space out the text by pressing tab between segments. For this example we want text to appear to the left, the center and to the right of our text box.  To set this up once we have clicked on the text box, choose where you want your first tab point to begin.  In this case we want to line up the left hand side, so we will double left click in the ruler icon at the top of the page all the way to the left. (as indicated by the red highlighted dot.)

This will bring up a menu where you will  choose which tab your trying to set up. (Left Tab, Center Tab and  Right Tab). You can also choose to have dots appear in between your tab spacing by choosing an option in the ‘leader area’.

Once you have set your first left hand side tab, repeat the process by double clicking on the ruler in the center of your text by and clicking in the  ’Center’ bubble. Then double clicking on the right hand side of your tab and clicking in the ‘Right’ bubble.  The end result should look like this (with the red highlights showing specifically where we clicked for our Left, Center and Right tabs.)

As you can see with the final result, the information is laid out evenly, and is a lot more intuitive to find the information your looking for. These tab settings are completely customizable to whatever project your working on. Tab spacing and the amount of tab sections can all be adjusted to suit your needs.

- By Jeff Pelletier

Working with master Pages By Jeff Pelletier

A Master Page in Microsoft publisher allows you to  have a repeating   image or text  on every page of your document  as you choose. For example let’s say we wanted a washed out background image on a few pages in our document.

The most convenient way of reaching the Master Page is to hit the following keys together Ctrl+ M you will notice a yellow background fills the pasteboard, this lets you know you are in your master page.

There are two ways of viewing Master Pages

1.  hit Ctrl+M to enter the master page view or Ctrl+M again to leave it and return to your normal editing screen.

2. Under View click on Master Page to activate the master page view an orange check mark will appear next to this once it’s activated. To Get out of the master Page View, under View, click Master Page again.

Master page content can only be edited from the master page View. This allows you to work in your normal view without having to worry about the content you placed in your master page view.
You can control where your master pages are used simply click on the page where you want your master page to either be turned on or off, and then in the left hand menu change to Master page A or Ignore Master

Master pages can be used to place repeating design pieces &, repeating time/date information, and anything else you would like to have consistently through your document!

Many editors call and ask why LPi changes their transmission times for holidays by two weeks or more. That means some editors may have to send a bulletin twice in one week!

We understand how confusing this can be for some of you, and it’s necessary for us to accommodate our printing and shipping schedules so we can ensure everyone gets their bulletins on time.

For example, because we are closed on Thanksgiving Day and the day after, we begin two weeks before Thanksgiving so by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, we are all home enjoying our dinners, knowing all our customers have their deliveries and can enjoy their holiday as well.

These transmission changes only happen a few times a year so we are grateful our customers understand our schedules and abide by them. We appreciate your help and understanding in getting your bulletins and/or newsletters to us in a timely matter. We count you all among our blessings!

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

 There may be times when you need to send your bulletin file weeks prior to when the file is due because of a vacation or holiday. LPi Express makes it easy for you to do this.

• Simply go through your normal steps to send the bulletin file, however, when you get to the Publication Option screen in LPi Express, Stop and Look at the Calendar; under Distribution Date.
• Click the Date on the Calendar that the bulletin is needed for. For example, if your bulletin is intended for Sunday, October 21st, select October 21st on the calendar. The date will then be graphically represented in Red.
• Click the Next button in the lower right corner to continue the process of sending your file. Once your file is submitted, it will be held until we print for the week of October 21st or unless other arrangements are made.
• Sending your bulletin to us correctly will ensure that it will post accurately to your Seek and Find web page, and that you will get your bulletins printed and delivered in a timely manner.