What’s the problem with Publisher?

In the past two years since the recession has hit small businesses hard, I have seen an influx of files created in programs like Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word and even MAC Pages.  Companies are trying to save  money they spent in the past on a graphic designer by having their staff create publications in the programs readily available at a low price.  There are many offset press printing companies that will not accept Publisher files for printing.  So what is the problem with Publisher?  In short, these programs were designed for home or digital printing.   There are 4 major issues with sending these files to an offset printer.

1.     Color: When you choose a color in Microsoft word or Publisher like Blue or Red they are a glowing representation of those two colors.  What you don’t realize is the blue that you have selected converts to a much darker blue (almost purple) in CMYK printing (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black inks mixed to create color on a printing press).  The red you have selected prints almost orange on a printing press.  Just about every color that you will choose in any of those programs (unless you know how to choose a CMYK color properly) will not print as you intend it to.  Call your offset printer if you want to find out about how to choose the proper CMYK color using the program you have.

2.     Fonts: Fonts are an issue no matter what program you create a file in, but since Word, and MAC Pages have no option for collecting the fonts used in the publication we will not guarantee that the fonts will print as you see them on your computer.  If we do not have the font you chose installed on our computer when opening the document, the Word and Mac pages programs automatically substitute a font without warning us.  This can make your final piece look like hieroglyphics!  We try our best to find the fonts you used, but it is always best when using programs outside of the professional design software to choose fonts that are common to most computers such as Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, Garamond, etc.

3.     Images: When using publisher you have the option to link or embed images in your document.  Most people don’t know how to change these options.  What’s the Difference?  Linking means that the images are saved in a folder separate from the publisher file and the publisher file contains a link where the image is supposed to be.  It is almost like a link to an image on a web page.  This keeps the size of the publisher file down.  If you link the images you have to package the file properly for your printers otherwise your images will not print well.  If we receive a publisher file with linked images, but they don’t send us the actually images in a different file, publisher automatically changes those images to be an embedded low-resolution image.  An embedded image is exactly what it sounds like.  The image is literally embedded into the publisher file at the resolution you set it to.  This means that the publisher file can become extra large making it cumbersome to work with.

4.     Bleed:  Most home publishing software does not provide an easy way to include a bleed on a document. Don’t know what a bleed is?  Click here to read my previous instructions on what a bleed is and for basic instructions on how to include a bleed in these programs.

I don’t hold anything against companies that use these programs to create publications. In fact I welcome newcomers to the graphic design profession. My advice is to learn to use the programs correctly. Figure out how to include a proper bleed, learn what colors to choose, use common fonts and learn the difference between embedding images and linking to the images. A way to avoid having the issues I have listed above is to send a print ready .pdf file to your printer. What do I mean when I say “print ready .pdf”? Look for my next edition of Pre-Press Tips and Tricks next month and I will hopefully be able to walk you through creating a print ready .pdf file. Good luck and be Sheetwise!