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Amadís15939492
Amadís15939492
Inspiring
July 9, 2019
Question

How do I adjust dot gain?

  • July 9, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 8170 views

Hi, a newspaper has asked me to adjust an illustration to allow a 30% dot gain. While I understand what this means and I know it has to do with colour profile presets, I don't know how to address the request. Is it possible to do this without leaving Illustrator or should I go into Photoshop? The image has no photos. Also, they are requesting not to exceed a 230% ink weight, and I am completely lost in this last part.

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      4 replies

      J
      jdanek
      Inspiring
      July 10, 2019

      If I am not mistaken, Illustrator's color setting allows 20% dot gain, so you only need to knock down the color values 10%.

      meganchi
      meganchi
      Legend
      July 9, 2019

      If you save out a pdf of your art, then you can open it in Acrobat. Use the Print Preview tool in order to see total ink coverage.

      Monika Gause
      Community Expert
      Monika GauseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 9, 2019

      You can achieve this by converting your artwork into an appropriate color profile when exporting it to PDF. In order to work well, this of course requires that your color management is set up accordingly.

      BUT: your artwork most probably is designed in CMYK (since you will be printing it). An ICC-profile based conversion from CMYK to CMYK will wreck your blacks and make them muddy.

      What kind of design are we talking about?

      Amadís15939492
      Amadís15939492Author
      Inspiring
      July 9, 2019

      Thank you for replying, Monika. The design has no real black, but I'll have to adjust the darker shade. Is there a way to precisely observe the percentage the newspaper requests? If not, which colour profile should I choose?

      Monika Gause
      Community Expert
      Monika GauseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 9, 2019

      In the case of this simple artwork with the limited number of colors I wouldn't do a profile conversion. Apart from that: Only the newspaper can tell you which profile they use or recommend.

      I'd rather Select all and then use Edit > Colors > Recolor artwork

      You can target each of the resulting colors and then enter the values precisely. The 30% dot gain will make them darker. In order to be able to somehow predict the result, printed newspaper samples would be useful. They exist in books such as this one (first search result, just a sample, so you know what I'm talking about) https://www.amazon.de/DCS®-Book-HKS-RAL-3-0/dp/B000A0K2L2/

      You could also try and set a softproof profile in View > Proof setup. The Dot Gain profile there is a grayscale profile. So it would be best to ask the newspaper which one they recommend or use.

        Doug A Roberts
        Community Expert
        Doug A RobertsCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        July 9, 2019

        Amadís  wrote

        Also, they are requesting not to exceed a 230% ink weight, and I am completely lost in this last part.

        I am by no means a print expert, but this part means the combined values of CMYK should not exceed 230% (i.e. 100C + 30M + 30Y + 0K = 160% ink weight).

        Amadís15939492
        Amadís15939492Author
        Inspiring
        July 9, 2019

        Thank you, Doug! That was very helpful.

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