Best way to create crop marks?

JC
Posted By
Jennifer_Castillo
Feb 2, 2007
Views
362
Replies
6
Status
Closed
Hi,

Can anyone tell me what’s the best way to create crop marks in Photoshop? Would it be to set up my guides where they should be and just draw lines there? Also, what does 4-color film separation mean?

Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Jen

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AC
Art Campbell
Feb 2, 2007
Easiest way to do either or both in Photoshop is probably to output to Adobe Acrobat, which provides built in pre-press capability in the .pdf.

I believe a free eval is still available if you don’t have it.

Art
AC
Art Campbell
Feb 2, 2007
Jennifer,

One other tip, although I may be jumping to conclusions from your first post.

If a printer is asking you to do color separations for them, especially if you’re not really experienced in doing that, you may want to look for a different printer. Most shops would usually prefer to do the work themselves from a .pdf or possibly a source file because they know the particular settings that work with their equipment better than outsiders do…

Cheers,
Art
JC
Jennifer_Castillo
Feb 3, 2007
Thank you Art and Cybernetic Nomad for your help!
J
JasonSmith
Feb 3, 2007
If your photoshop file is in CMYK it already has 4 different color separations, they’re just merged together in one file.

They dont get split up until the last step of the file’s digital life – at the RIP, just before the printing stage.

Therefore it is/should be the printer’s job to worry about it.
M
Mousewrites
Feb 3, 2007
Hi!

Best way to create crop marks is to let PS do it for you: file>print with preview>output tab (might be under the color management tab; they’re roommates). Check "Corner Crop Marks"

That way they’ll ALWAYS be right, and you don’t have to draw them in.

Re: separations… yeah, if your printshop wants YOU to do them, might wanna get somebody else.

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