Subtitles of the Movie

Setting Color and Trap Preferences. Color management sounds complex and easy all at the same time. If you're a brand-new user, you're probably thinking that it can't be all that tough to manage colors. If you're an intermediate user, you've probably heard of color management and are concerned about getting in over your head. After all, isn't color management best left to the professionals? If you're an advanced user of earlier versions of QuarkXPress you may be of the opinion that you're the expert and QuarkXPress lacks the necessary tools. Well, before QuarkXPress 7, you may have been right. Color management is easy. You simply load source setups and output setups and you're ready to go. Even easier, you can choose to stick with the defaults and let QuarkXPress 8 do all the work. These two components, the source setup and output setup describe from where the colors came and to where the colors will output. For instance, if you created an image in Photoshop and embedded the color profile, the source setup is from Photoshop. If you're outputting to an Indigo Press, your output provider may give you an output setup complete with all the ICC information for that device. Using preferences, you can set up the color management system. Remember though, if you change these preferences with a project open, then the settings will apply only to that project. If you're setting up your entire color management system, you will likely want to approach that with no project open and therefore set the default for all projects created going forward. Let's get started by launching the Preferences Dialog Box. If you're on a Mac, choose QuarkXPress, Preferences. For Windows users, go to Edit, Preferences. In addition to managing source setup and the output setup, you will want to manage your display too. Choose the Display Pane under Application and then check here for the monitor. When this drop-down menu is set to automatic, it defaults to the display on which you are currently viewing the project. But you can change this to another monitor if you prefer. This can be helpful if you're moving the project back and forth between your Desktop and laptop computers and you want to maintain consistency. Scroll to the Color Manager Pane of the Print Layout section. In the first drop-down menu you choose the color engine that will be used for transforming colors for color management. These are industry standards so any one of them might be recommended. In the Source Options Pane, choose one of the predefined source setups from the drop-down menu. If your output provider has given you a source setup, you could use a pen or drag it to the Profiles Folder within your QuarkXPress 8 Folder and then control the accessibility using the Profile Manager within the Utilities Menu. Soft proofing is a method of simulating your output so that you can see how it will look before output. We covered soft proofing in a movie of that title within this video tutorial. To set the default for soft proofing, choose a predefined proof output and rendering intent from the drop-down menus. In the Vector EPS PDF Files Pane, you choose the methods for color managing imported EPSs and PDFs. Remember, preferences are defaults or guidelines if you will. They can always be changed mid project. With some preferences you have to return here to the Preferences Dialog Box but with others you can make the change locally on an object-by-object basis. While it's true that extensive and expertly accurate color management is best left to the professionals, once that professional creates the profile it's easy to set the default and feel confident that your project will output to their specifications. Now let's move down to Trap Preferences. QuarkXPress uses the preferences you set here to automatically trap colors of varying hues and shades based on the relative luminance of the object and the underlying colors. Using the Colors Dialog Box, you set trapping based on color relationships. Using the Trap Information Palette, you set trapping on an item-level basis. From this first drop-down menu, you can choose absolute, proportional or knock out all. Absolute will follow the values that you specifically set in the Color Trap Dialog Box or using the Trap Information Palette. Proportional uses QuarkXPress's internal trap settings and applies them proportionally. Knock out all will, by way of explanation, punch holes in the underlying colors when an object is on top of it. Process trapping enables trapping for process or CMYK color values. Enabling Ignore White will instruct QuarkXPress 8 to disregard any items with white attributes. In the Auto Amount Field you may type a value. This is the amount that an item will choke or get smaller or spread, get larger, when it encounters an underlying color. This default value is fairly standard. If you prefer, set it to overprint so that the color prints atop any underlying colors. Indeterminate is a color mix that QuarkXPress can not decipher. If you import a four-color image, for instance, QuarkXPress considers this an indeterminate color. Set a value here for the trap or choose Overprint to have the color printed on top of underlying colors. When an object color and background color meet on a printed page, the direction of trap is determined by the relative luminance, lightness or brightness of the colors. In these last two fields you set the threshold for the color value after which the action is applied. For instance, if you have a knockout limit of five percent, any color value five percent or over will knockout. But if it's four percent, then it will not. If your overprint limit is set to 95 percent, only those colors with the 95 percent or more shade will be considered for an overprint. While it's a good idea to understand trapping, keep in mind that regardless of your wishes, most commercial output providers have in-rip trapping systems that will override your settings. Before you get too involved in using trapping, speak with your output provider and find out whether or not they will remove your settings.