Halos on printed text...

I've had some leaflets and business cards printed recently and when they've come back there has been a halo around dark text on white backgrounds.  It's not there on the files but is clear on the end result.  Doesn't seem to matter whether the file is sent RGB or CMYK.

Files are created in CS5 on a Mac.  Is that the problem or is there something else I need to do???

Thanks!

Sounds like print bleed. Which woudl be a problem at the printers end.

I'm no expert I should add. Best response woud be from a print expert. Mark Mundin is your man on that front.

http://www.4networking.biz/Members/Details/29460

Not sure if the above really shows it.  It looks fluffy round the edges and you can clearly see the individual lito dots...

Jeesshh ... I've seen better quality from vistaprint!

Well it was vistaprint...

And I've just realised it was actually sent as a psd and not a jpg...

hmmm.

The halo effect around the type as you called it is due to the plates being out of register, there could and can be other reasons but this is a press/paper issue and has nothing to do with the file.

You need bleed when you have blocks of colour, lines, photographs etc. going over the edge of the paper. Having bleed means that when your projects are cut you don't end up with a white line of unprinted paper on one edge. Bleed allows for movement of the paper when trimming. This is not a bleed problem.

This looks you scanned your leaflet, when you scanned it was it at 100% ie. same size as the original or did you enlarge it? if enlarged you will clearly see the screen ie. dots making up the colour. If this is how your printed leaflet looked, then this would be a plate issue where the LPI ie. Lines Per Inch is to low resulting in a course screen "larger dots"

CMYK text always has a slightly fuzzy edge due to it being made of dots and not a solid colour. If you want crisp text make sure use a decent print company.

Never send RGB files to a printers as the conversion the printers make to CMYK will or can change the final colour.

You said files were created in CS5, would that be Indesign, Illustrator or Photoshop? If Photoshop that could/would cause a problem with high quality text.

If you would like me to give your files the once over, send them to me at brett@saxondigital.co.uk and I'll be more than happy to help with any issues that there may be.

Well, there's your problem, Vistaprint and a PSD. never send JPGs for printing text, always comes out really bad.

If you would like me to reset this so you have proper high quality PDF  just let me know.

Brett

Ahh, yes sending the PSD file will have done that, they will have compressed the file resulting in the halo effect. 

To be honest, I wouldn't and don't use Photoshop for text. It's not the straight parts of the text that you need to worry to much it's the curves. 

Thanks all for your help.  Lesson learned.  Vistaprint actually recommend psd files, but will also accept pdfs.  Maybe that's my solution.

Your'e welcome Chris, 

As Bruce mentioned earlier its all about the resolution with PSDs and Tiffs. To get decent text out of photoshop you need  an image thats a lot higher than the normal 300dpi used for photographs. 

You might find the following useful:-

When creating artwork for print always aim to keep it simple.  For example, photographs in photoshop saved at 100% (required size), logos in Illustrator saved at 100% (required size) and then place both of these into a program such as QuarkXpress or Indesign for positioning and typesetting. From here you can either print as a PS (postscript) file for distilling to create a PDF or export directly as a PDF. Working this way means that you get the best quality at each stage, plus, perfect PDFs for the printers. Don't forget bleed and trim marks if required.

Or you could just work in Photoshop and Illustrator and create the final PDF in Illustrator, it just depends on the type of project you are working on.

Anyway, if you have any problems my offer still stands if you need it.

Yes...  Thanks, Karen...

I use Moo for mine and am absolutely thrilled by them.  These were for my wife.  She wanted something quick and dirty.  Not quite this dirty though!