Anti-Alias On Text To Be Printed

Hello all.

I'm not new to photoshop, I've been doing web design since '99, but I am net to working with printed material and the CMYK enviroment.

I'm designing some full color business cards entirely in photoshop 7 and I have a couple questions:

1) Is it true that one should turn off Anti-Alias when creating text for printing? I know it looks jaggy on the screen but I heard it is suppose to be better for printing.

2) Should I set the text layer to "Multiply" not "normal"?

I want the text to be as clear as possible so any other tips or hints would be greatly appreciated as well.

I am thinking about working with either printingforless.com or overnightprints.com and I'd love to hear from anyone who has worked with either of these companies, good or bad.

Thanks,
John

DrJohn,

If you save as PDF for press your text will be retained as TEXT and not rasterized and so print in the highest possible quality. Anti-aliasing will therefore not affect output one way or another.

Using Multiply will give you the same effect as overprinting. This is often done with small black text when going to print. However, as Photoshop uses a 'rich black' by default, it will serve no purpose in Photoshop, and could result in excessive ink coverage.

Just to expand on what Len said. Make sure that you use pure black for small text. Rich black could easily result in muddy looking type and / or registration problems.

I'd also suggest saving the card as a PDF with fonts embedded, vectors retained and layers turned off.

Make sure that your resolution is set to 300 dpi if you're using any raster images.

Bob

printingforless.com
I like 'em!