The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book [Paperback]

Sandee Cohen (Author), Robin Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0201353946 | ISBN-13: 978-0201353945 | Edition: 1

For most non-designers, especially beginning desktop publishers, the scanning, prepress, and printing process isn't an intuitive one. Trial and error is often the only way to learn the technical basics of producing professional-looking documents.

If you're tired of learning the hard way, The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book is for you. Using the format that is so popular in Peachpit's best-selling Non-Designer's series, this latest offering, fully cross-platform, provides a multitude of tips, techniques, and design, prepress, and production principles to help create professional-looking documents. Clear instructions and numerous examples cover the entire process of scanning, prepress, and printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book (Non-Designer's Series) is an excellent guide for beginners who want to learn the essentials of scanning images and printing professional-looking publications. Authors Robin Williams and Sandee Cohen are two well-known desktop publishing (DTP) experts who have written a number of acclaimed computer-graphics books, and here they do an outstanding job of distilling the core elements of scanning, manipulating, and outputting images from high-tech, esoteric details.

Williams and Cohen commence their tour of scanning and printing by explaining how to plan your project. They begin by encouraging you to choose your paper, colors, graphics, binding, number of folds and copies, and printing methods. Then they introduce you to basic DTP and business issues like resolution, paper size, print area, cost of goods, fonts, and PostScript. Their highly rudimentary approach even includes a discussion of the type of printing device necessary to complete your project and whether you will need to use an inkjet, laser, dye-sublimation, or thermal wax printer. From there, they look to the essentials of commercial printing, finding a print shop, working within a budget, and using processes such as letterpress, flexography, and gravure.

Subsequent chapters delve into computer issues like software applications commonly used for DTP projects and how they handle color modes, raster images, resolution, vector images, and file formats. You also tackle color issues such as process color printing, using spot colors and duotones, and specifying the number of colors in a publication.

Image acquisition plays a big role in completing any project, and the authors provide helpful tips for using scanners, digital cameras, Kodak Photo CD-ROMs, stock photography, and clip art. Finally, you study printer topics such as using high-res output, working with service bureaus, determining output specs such as client and delivery information, writing film specs, using printer's marks, understanding resolution and linescreen issues, trapping, and proofing your job. There's also a preflight checklist to help you determine whether you've thought everything through. At the end of the book, you get quizzes or projects for most of the chapters as well as a list of resources for more information. --David Wall

From Library Journal

Williams is famous for her "nondesigner" books for those of us struggling with a late-life conversion to the multimedia arts of graphic design in our Internet-obsessed worlds. This outstanding title from Williams and Cohen, graphics coordinator for the New School Computer Instruction Center in New York, guides the reader through the process of dealing with page-layout programs, scanning and digital cameras, prepress preparation, and either selecting desktop printing or sending electronic files to service bureaus and print shops. Nothing fancy, just excellent instruction for new designers using either Mac or Windows.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press; 1 edition (January 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201353946
• ISBN-13: 978-0201353945
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 6.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #754,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 161 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I wish I would have had this book 3 years ago!, May 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book (Paperback)

I am a non-designer. Between you and me I've had no idea what I'm doing lo these last 2 1/2 years that I've been editor of my User Group's newsletter. Sometimes I'll have to deal with advertisers and printers and they'll start throwing around terms like "linescreen," "halftone," "moire patterns," and "rotogravure." Actually I've never heard that last one used in anything but the song "Easter Parade," and this book defines it.

Oh sure, I *thought* I knew what I was doing, at least well enough to get by. I had a copy of PageMaker and a few hours of "show-me" from the previous editor. But after reading this book, I now know that I really didn't have a clue how to do this properly. And it's too bad I didn't get this book earlier, because now we've got a layout editor on board who's an actual pro! Oh well.

This book is aimed squarely at people like me, people who have the responsibility of creating flyers, newsletters, pamphlets, advertisements, etc., but who really don't know much about it. It is not at all condescending when it begins at the very beginning, describing the very basics of printing such as resolution, dots, the different kinds of printers, the different kinds of print-shops, and what questions to ask in order to get the best results.

It proceeds to explain the different types of graphics. Every wonder what the real difference between a BMP and a JPG are? It's in here. Along with PNG, TIF, EPS, WMF, and just about every other graphic type used. Also, the distinction between vector images and raster images is explained.

The focus of the book tends to be on Adobe products, which is alright for me since I've been using Adobe PageMaker to do the newsletter, but if you're a QuarkXPress users, it may put you off a bit. And if you're trying to do newsletters using a word processor such as Word or WordPerfect, this book will set you straight. In fact, if you're doing that, this is just the book for you since it will show you all of the limitations of that approach.

This book isn't necessarily for the recent buyer of a scanner who's just looking for ways to make their photo scans look good. It's probably overkill for that, since one chapter alone covers the essentials for great scans. It is full of useful tips, formulas, and rules of thumb that will prove replaceable in my library.

One of the appendices at the end of the book has quizzes for each chapter, and some of the questions are based on theoretical projects. This is all very helpful, but I didn't see this until I reached the end of the book. It might've been useful if the end of each chapter would have mentioned taking the available quiz. This is my only complaint.

Did I mention that this book is comprehensive. It covers everything! My brain sorta hurts from all the new information I've just received. And the embarrassing thing is that I should have known this information before I ever became editor.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MADE ME A SUCCESS!!!, July 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book (Paperback)

Three years ago, my boss decided that we should create our own advertising and brochures. I purchased a Mac G3 and went to work, learning everything I could about design. If I hadn't read this book, I would have been a miserable failure. Instead, I was able to create my first brochure (which the printer said was in the top 90% of the brochures he had seen) in less than two months. This book taught me about resolution, file formats, and everything else I needed to know to have my brochure and ads printed correctly. Although I own many books and resources on graphic design and output, this is the one I could not have done without!

Sandee and Robin, thank you so much for your help! I couldn't have done it without you!

Benjamin Summers, M.B.A. Tomorrow's Resources Unlimited, Inc. www.truball.com

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!!, October 22, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Non-Designer's Scan and Print Book (Paperback)

I was a technical trainer for four years and was in charge of teaching classes such as color theory, digital printing, scanning etc. I really loved this book because it put everything together for me after about 10 months of scraping information from a lot of different sources. You can't go wrong with this book.