Adobe newbie - help!

[Stephanie264895268p3p]

I designed a planner in Adobe InDesign and have already sold a LOT, so it can't be changed, but I miscalculated the pages I can get from each toner, so it's cost me a lot more than expected. The parent page for 95% of the pages is a full-size floral image, so I'm wondering if it's printing the entire image and then printing the boxes and trackers on top of it... do y'all think that is what could be using up my ink? If so, please tell me there's a simple QUICK fix. Thank you in advance!! 

[Michael Bullo]

Could you please post a screen shot that includes your Layers panel?

[Stephanie264895268p3p]

[Michael Bullo]

If you want to see how your document is getting separated out into the various inks you may want to explore the Separations Preview panel.

Window > Output > Separations Preview

Set the View option to Separations and click on the individual inks. You can activate multiple inks by clicking on the eyeball icons.

[Stephanie264895268p3p]

I was reading something about this last night.. should I activate or de-activate one of them, or will it compromise the printing?

[Michael Bullo]

This is an on screen preview thing and will not interfere with your printing.

[Willi Adelberger]

Bring it to a professioal printer. It will look better, is cheaper and color calculation is not your's.

[Stephanie264895268p3p]

next time 🙂

[Randy Hagan]

Is your floral image reproduced as full-color or black-and-white? What are you using for your laser printer? What kinds of volume are we talking about for producing your planner, both total run and on-demand? Any special binding or finishing? Have you got room for storing a larger run than you immediately need?

Sharing answers to these questions will help us help you find the best solution for producing your planners efficiently and economically.

Hope this helps,

Randy

Th

[Stephanie264895268p3p]

Is your floral image reproduced as full-color or black-and-white? Full color, with white boxes on top. What are you using for your laser printer? Brother. What kinds of volume are we talking about for producing your planner, both total run and on-demand? I'm not sure what you mean by this question, but this order is 67,000 sheets of paper. Any special binding or finishing? Yes, but I have that handled Have you got room for storing a larger run than you immediately need? Somewhat

Sharing answers to these questions will help us help you find the best solution for producing your planners efficiently and economically.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The cost inefficiency here, never mind the cost-to-quality ratio, makes my head hurt.

This is well into the range where a commercial printer would do a much better job and probably for a fraction of the cost.

Commercial printing should be looked into for any job that involves more than 1-200 sheets or 2-3 copies of a document overall.

Next time, I guess.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

67K pages on a Brother printer? How many pages is each planner? 

Are your profit margins that tight that the [extra] toner is going to cost you money or are you just not making as much as you hoped?

How did you calculate the toner coverage/usage--by the numbers the toner company give you?

[Randy Hagan]

You're absolutely in the clip where it'll be worth it to put this out for commercial printing, if only for the preprinted backgrounds. But at those volumes, unless they're 670-page planners, I would imagine it'll be worth it to sub out the entire print job. Depending on the job, you'll often see a breakeven point between home production and subletting it will be as small as 500/1000 units.

It's good that you're using InDesign to generate your piece, in that that is the standard for commercial printing prepress. Consult with your preferred printer and hopefully it'll be easy to turn your digital files into delivered planner books for your customers.

Good luck,

Randy

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Digital printing tends not to print all layers as separate elements, but as already discussed, the layers in the document can be configured to output or export in various ways.

A very simple point, though: printers don't print white, so if your "boxes and trackers" are largely white or a very pale tint — as I would assume they are, for writing purposes — there would be far less toner on those areas, regardless of what's under them on other layers.

In any case, a full-page image with little or no white or highlights is going to use a LOT of toner. In general, you want to keep color density down, across the page and pages, for things you're going to print on a home/office printer. Cartridges that will last 5,000 text pages will go dry in a few hundred full-image pages.

I think your options are to redesign the layout for less toner usage, take the job to a commercial printer for better/net-cheaper production, or just accept that your toner costs are going to eat into your profits.

[Stephanie264895268p3p]

Thank you for answering my questions and giving me other things to consider. I will be outsourcing next time! 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What is the reason that you can't outsource the rest of the current batch? 

Or even do the whole batch again - if color consistency is a must - depends on how far into this 67k you are? 

[Scott Falkner]

Your printer almost certainly cannot print white, so any white areas on your page are areas that do not, and never contained, toner. A black object completely covered with a white object will print as plank and use no toner or ink.