Why design in colour and print in B&W?

[Poi]

What is with this? Books are apparently being designed in colour and then printed in black and white.
This just doesn't work. Text with a colour background image can work, but the same image will rarely work in black and white, where the lack of separation makes the text very hard to read.

Please stop, and give us nice clear products. Keep the design to the borders and art, not behind the text.

 

[lordmalachdrim]

Dream Pod 9 designs all their art and such in full color and then print it in black and white, or at least they use to. Not too sure about their newest books.

Anyway for the art it always seemed to work nicely.

 

[Poi]

It's fine for art, the problem is when it is used for backgrounds to text. What balances in colour will not always balance in B&W.

 

[lordmalachdrim]

Ah, I see you're point there.

 

[Court Jester]

Colour art will also rarely work printed in black and white. Say what you want about the artin the new Traveller book but it is visible because it was drawn as a B&W images (and Traveller has no merky page backgrounds obscuring the text).

Most of the pictures in the ACTA rulebook were impossible to see because of poor contrast when printed in B&W.

Make sure the layout and design is done in B&W if y'all are going to be printing in B&W. And commission page borders in B&W for the same reasons.

Just one of my pet peevs thats all...

 

[danbuter]

I wish all rpg books were layed out like the Traveller book. It's very easy to read.

 

[Chernobyl]

photos usually are difficult to transfer to black & white. Art can be grayscale and look just fine, but photos can look bad very easily.

Chern

 

[Mike V]

So where did my post go?

 

[lastbesthope]

So where did my post go?

Don't know, I didn't delete it.

LBH

 

[Mike V]

So where did my post go?

Don't know, I didn't delete it.

LBH

I smell a conspiracy Either way, let's try this again.

Things that affect a color to black to white conversion the most are value range and properly applied lighting. This also holds true with graphic design and page layout.

In the case that the art looks like poo when converted from color the only person to blame in that equation is the art director. I've found that in many cases mistakes like that are made because the art director is not an artist and doesn't know what to look for.

 

[Da Boss]

photos usually are difficult to transfer to black & white. Art can be grayscale and look just fine, but photos can look bad very easily.

Chern

I wondered about that - is there any reason not to change the photos to grayscale like you do in Word etc? It seems to be better to convert the image to greyscale and then print - but thats just me and v basic software?

 

[Samvail1]

In my experience there are certain rules which must be followed.

Never print a B/W document with colour images because the images WILL be too dark.

Never mix CMYK and RBG, because they don't mix and WILL conflict

Never use a final image resolution for colour or greyscale image of under 300 dpi

... unless it's a bitmap image, then don't go under 800 dpi

never use a .pdf document as an image because they are filled with all sorts of hidden data and rubbish which can screw the job (especially when saving to .pdf)

This is the sort of thing an Art Director or Graphic Designer will sort out before sending files to the printer.

Sam
(Graphic Designer of 25 yrs exp)

 

[Mike V]

In my experience there are certain rules which must be followed.

Never print a B/W document with colour images because the images WILL be too dark.

Never mix CMYK and RBG, because they don't mix and WILL conflict

Never use a final image resolution for colour or greyscale image of under 300 dpi

... unless it's a bitmap image, then don't go under 800 dpi

never use a .pdf document as an image because they are filled with all sorts of hidden data and rubbish which can screw the job (especially when saving to .pdf)

This is the sort of thing an Art Director or Graphic Designer will sort out before sending files to the printer.

Sam
(Graphic Designer of 25 yrs exp)

I agree with you on all your points w/the exception of the color being printed as black and white. If you go through and convert all the images to gray scale it will reproduce just fine.

 

[lastbesthope]

So where did my post go?

Don't know, I didn't delete it.

LBH

I smell a conspiracy Either way, let's try this again.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean we're not out to get you! :lol:

LBH

 

[Samvail1]

[
I agree with you on all your points w/the exception of the color being printed as black and white. If you go through and convert all the images to gray scale it will reproduce just fine.

Hey Mike, I meant if you printed with colour images in place, without converting to greyscale. Perhaps I should edit that point to make it clearer.

Sam

 

[Mike V]

[
I agree with you on all your points w/the exception of the color being printed as black and white. If you go through and convert all the images to gray scale it will reproduce just fine.

Hey Mike, I meant if you printed with colour images in place, without converting to greyscale. Perhaps I should edit that point to make it clearer.

Sam

Ah got it, thanks for the heads up!

 

[Da Boss]

sooo is there any tech reason not to convert to greyscale? :?

 

[Samvail1]

sooo is there any tech reason not to convert to greyscale? :?

In my experience, there is no technical reason why a colour image can't be greyscaled first, beyond the fact that it has to be done, re-saved and organised correctly which is time consuming. It makes for a superior image in the long run.

Sam

 

[-Daniel-]

So far, my only real issue with color to B/W is when we are talking about an image used as a "Background" with Type over it. In some products the image is so dark or complex that it makes reading the type harder. In a couple cases it even looks like they type was converted from a mixed black and thus went grey as well. This makes it very hard to read the text (the very reason I buy many of the books, the content).

Daniel

 

[Mike V]

So far, my only real issue with color to B/W is when we are talking about an image used as a "Background" with Type over it. In some products the image is so dark or complex that it makes reading the type harder. In a couple cases it even looks like they type was converted from a mixed black and thus went grey as well. This makes it very hard to read the text (the very reason I buy many of the books, the content).

Daniel

Could you show some examples? It's always good to have a visual for not only the product but of what is considered unacceptable. I'm always down to pick up a new working style if it means that whatever book I'm working on is more user friendly