MarkC-UK Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 A friend has asked me to come up with a flyer design for him. Whilst talking to the guy at the print shop regarding prices/quotes he mentioned something interesting. He said that PS is not the most suitable app. for anything that has text and that Quark or Indesign would be more suitable. Any thoughts/comments on this? I've laid out the design using Photoshop and don't want to start all over. Can one of the above programs bring in my graphical layout to which I can then add text to? Why are these programs more suitable than PS? Surely, when you save out of ANY of these apps, the image is flattened and ends up the same anyway?? Looking forward to the enlightenment! TIA, MarkC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 Um...wat? So the guy says that photoshop doesnt handle fonts well? Or did he really mean to say that it doesnt have as many types of fonts as Quark express not knowing that thats not determined by the software? Or does Quark have the ability to perform 3d interctive print outs on hardcopies? Being 99% serious maybe hes got himself a little deal on converting people from Adobe software? Maybe hes an ex-macromedia worker still angry at the takeover? (although it actually wasnt a takeover - they sold it) Being 100% serious now - what sort of flyers? Im dont think thats the case. I mean Ive designed flyers in PS in the past and the text came out crisp doezens of times... ok actually a couple of times (I didnt make that many flyier layouts)... youve got text and text... it depends on the dpi of the flattened image. Did you ask him to explain more? Maybe there is something Im missing. Cheers m8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 He probably means that text in PS ends up rasterized at the image resolution, whereas in a vector program like Indesign or Illustrator it stays as text and prints at the printer's maximum resolution. If your Photoshop file is not at a high res you might notice a loss of quality in the text (the edges becoming blurry or jaggy). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 He probably means that text in PS ends up rasterized at the image resolution, whereas in a vector program like Indesign or Illustrator it stays as text and prints at the printer's maximum resolution. If your Photoshop file is not at a high res you might notice a loss of quality in the text (the edges becoming blurry or jaggy). Ahh... did not know that Quark Express is vector graphic based... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkC-UK Posted April 9, 2008 Author Share Posted April 9, 2008 Thanks for the reply gents. I've been reading the artwork guide he gave me (the company was printing.com) and I quote: "We really advise against setting text in a bitmap application like Photoshop - the text will not be nearly as clear as if it were vector text from Illustrator or Freehand, say." I've set the resolution at 300ppi. So, should I bang out of PS and carry on in say Quark for the addition of all my text? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 Yep, Andrew and Brian nailed it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 Yes, you could use Photoshop and get a good result. As long as you are conscious of resolution and if your text is being rasterized.... which some people might not know to do. Whereas if it's done in any the other mentioned vectored apps, the printshop knows it's going to come out clean, so if more people use their preferred applications it makes their life easier and can guarantee a better end result. My biggest reason for doing text in illustrator is that it's alot easier to grab multiple text objects and change formatting.... It's more about using the right tools for the right job in my opinion. Technically you could do your text in MS Paint, but it's not the optimal program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted April 9, 2008 Share Posted April 9, 2008 Well if youre done In PS already and dont want to sit in anymore, I would continue it in PS - your DPI is fine just make sure you print out a try out and check all is ok instead of printing a thousand flyers straight. Once decent image proportions are taken account for there cant be much of a difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kstruve Posted April 21, 2008 Share Posted April 21, 2008 I'm posting this way too late, probably, but here's my take on using Photoshop for text: The comments about Photoshop rasterizing text is true IF you keep it in Photoshop format. The advantage of using Indesign and Quark and Illustrator, etc., is that those formats maintain the postscript nature of text, whereas Photoshop turns it to pixels. HOWEVER, if you place your text in Photoshop and save it as a PDF, Voila! The fonts are intact and are postscript. Perfectly suitable for any print shop's needs. Photoshop Text: Photoshop PDF Text: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkC-UK Posted April 22, 2008 Author Share Posted April 22, 2008 Kurt, I appreciate the time and effort in a) posting and b) attaching example images. I read up a little today regards PostScript/PDF and did a test; saving out as .jpg, .tiff and .pdf. The results were enlightening Thankyou for your advice. MarkC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesTaylor Posted April 22, 2008 Share Posted April 22, 2008 The common take on it in respect to printers is that text is fine in photoshop above 10pts - you can get away with 8pts but if go to 6pts you need to enbed the vector data. PDF is one way to achieve this, in my experience i usually output the final print file to an .eps which included vector data for the text (althought the text is no longer editable). This method is probably doing exactly what outputting to an pdf does i would guess and probably originates from times before PDF was so universal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter M. Gruhn Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Especially since he said "bitmap programs," I presume the issue is over rasterized text. The PDF out should solve that (warning, I am not a print shop maven). Another issue might be that while PShop can "do text" it doesn't really do typesetting. As a print shop guy, he may be sensitive to ugly typesetting. I've got a book on PShop type. It's how to make it look like candy. I've got a book on InDesign type. It has a whole chapter on the hyphen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stylEmon Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 i didnt read all post, but i thought it might be worth mentioning, sometimes PDFs inaccuratly represent kerning and leading... as a rule of thumb, Illustrator (or vector based software) handles text much better than raster based software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 He probably means that text in PS ends up rasterized at the image resolution, whereas in a vector program like Indesign or Illustrator it stays as text and prints at the printer's maximum resolution. If your Photoshop file is not at a high res you might notice a loss of quality in the text (the edges becoming blurry or jaggy).This is what I would think the guy is coming from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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