Our first goal it to establish the dimensions of an Amaray™ style insert.
In order to achieve this we must first know which sub sections such an insert would have, the obvious parts are the front cover, the rear cover and the spine, however there are a couple more things we must include, namely bleed and safety areas around the final image.
But what are bleed and safety areas?
They are essentially the inverse of one-another, but both exist for the same reason. When commissioning a printing studio to print your image on to products, they will print many images onto a very large sheet, before slicing it into the individual products with a guillotine. This allows many copies to be produced quickly and cheaply, however the slicing is not always accurate, this is where bleed and safety areas are required.
The bleed area is essentially an extension of you picture beyond the required dimensions to avoid blank borders if the final product has been guillotined marginally too large. Therefore this area should contain a continuation of the background coloration to eliminate any such borders.
The safety area, is essentially the opposite, in that it is an area you should refrain from placing any important information, and probably only have background coloration, in case the product is sliced marginally smaller than intended.
Interestingly most printing companies require bleed areas, but very few mention safety areas. However it is always good practice to include a safety area, to avoid disappointment with the final prints. And one should always check their required bleed sizes, since it actually enlarges the image beyond normal dimensions.
The full list of dimension we need to obtain can be illustrated by the following sketch :
Dimensions sketch
For the stock dimensions we go straight to the horse's mouth, and visit www.amaray.com. On their website we can find the following items :
- Rear and Front Width : 129.5mm
- Spine Width : 14mm
- Height : 183mm
Total Size : 273x183mm
Moving onto the bleed and safety areas, since these are specific to the printing process, the easiest way to obtain industry standards is to visit a printing company's website. The information found is that both are 1/8th of an inch. Thus poses a small problem, in that we have been working in millimeters, however as we all know, there are 25.4mm to 1 inch, so the conversion is simple enough :
- Safety and Bleed : 3.175mm(1/8")
Total Size(all inclusive) : 279.35x189.35mm
The next objective is to establish the best attributes for the image.
We are doing the majority of the work on this DVD insert in Adobe PhotoShop™. When creating a new image we are presented with a number of options to fill out, these are what we are going to attempt to establish in the section. The options requested are the following :
- Height and Width : These we covered in the previous section.
- Resolution : This represents the image density, how many dots or pixels are present for a given size. Typically in dpi(Dots Per Inch), higher dpi will provide a crisper higher quality image, but will in return require much more system resources to work with.
- Colour Mode : Most of you should be familiar with RGB(Red Green Blue) the typical system used for computing, however other modes exist for other purposes, such as Grayscale and CMYK(Cyan Magenta Yellow Black). We will look at these in more detail before making a decision.
- Bit Depth : PhotoShop™ supports 1, 8, 16 and 32 bits. This represents how many individual shades of each channel are available for use within the image. The high the bit mode the smoother color transitions will be, particularly noticeable with gradients and other similar transitions. They are expressed in bits, which are powers or 2. Thus the actual shades per channel would be 2, 256, 65K, 4,000M.
Background Colour : Simply the base colour of the canvas.
Let's first look at the image resolution, since this is intended as a printed product, we will once again refer to a printing company's guidelines. And after doing so we find that they will accept almost any resolution, but recommend a minimum of 300dpi unless working with huge banners and such taht will be viewed from large distances. One may notice that 300dpi is already vastly superior to the 72dpi, the standard screen display resolution, suggested by default in PhotoShop™. Therefore we shall deem this sufficient, and any higher excessive, since under normal usage the human eye will likely struggle to discern between 300dpi and above, so there is little reason to unnecessarily increase system resource requirements beyond this value.
Moving onto the colour mode and bit depth, Photoshop™ once again has a default suggestion, RGB, 8Bit, which is perfectly adequate for most requirements, we should however ensure this is the case for our purposes. We can instantly discard Grayscale, since we require a colour image, this leaves RBG, a light based colour mode suitable for monitor displays that function with light emissions. And CMYK, an ink based colour mode more suitable for printing. Therefore it would seem logical that one should select the latter, but let's once again refer to the printing company for verification.
Indeed it does request the file as CMYK, however since we will be working on a monitor it will be much easier and more appropriate to work in RGB, thankfully PhotoShop™ has a solution for this dilemma, by allowing you to convert between colour modes. So we will create an RGB image, and convert the final picture to CMYK.
Annoyingly the printing company makes no recommendations as to bit depth, probably judging that it is entirely a customers own choice. Thankfully it is a relatively simple choice, once one knows that 24bit colour is also referred to as true colour, in the sense that of all the standard computing bit depths, it is the one that most approximates the human eyes own abilities to differentiate colours. True colour is approximately 16.7M colours, obtained via 24bit depth, through 3 channels, and thus 8Bit per channel, conveniently the default setting within PhotoShop™.
Finally we must address the background colour. Since this is actually nothing more than the colour of the initial canvas, a canvas we intend to cover in it's entirety, the choice will actually have very little impact. However to ensure that we have no unexpected background colour filtering through as we work on the image, the smartest option is to select a transparent background.
Summary of the selected options :
- Resolution : 300dpi.
- Colour Mode : RGB, to be converted to CMYK in final stages.
- Bit Depth : 8bit per channel.
- Background Colour : Transparent.
Creating a PhotoShop™ template
Now that we have completed researching the required information we can move onto creating a template within PhotoShop™ which will serve as a basis for creating the actual final product. This template will be saved, with all future works being carried out on a copy of it, so that we are able to refer back to the template, or re-use it, as required.
Stage 1 : Creating the blank image.
From within PhotoShop™ we start by creating a new image, using the settings we have decided on in the above sections :
- Width : 279.35mm
- Height : 189.35mm
- Resolution : 300dpi
- Colour Mode & Depth : RGB, 8bit
- Background : Transparent
Stage 2 : Adding guides.
The next stage is to add some guides to the template, so we can see at a glance the borders between safety, bleed, front, rear and spine areas.
From the menu bar, select View>New Guide.
Select Vertical, and 3.175mm(the bleed size)
We then repeat this at the following positions :
- 6.35mm(3.175x2) : First safety area.
- 132.675mm(129.5+3.175) : Border between rear and spine.
- 146.675mm(previous+14) : Border between spine and front.
- 276.175mm(previous+129.5) : Second actual/bleed border.
- 273mm(previous-3.175) : Second safety area.
Following the same procedure we can add horizontal guides, at the following positions :
- 3.175mm : Top bleed/actual border.
- 6.35mm : Top safety area.
- 186.175mm(189.3-3.175) : Bottom bleed/actual border.
- 183mm(previous-3.175) : Bottom safety area.
Stage 3 : Textual descriptions.
The final part of creating this template is to add some text to the main areas, just to ensure we know at a glance what they are, as well as their dimensions for future reference, so using the text tool, selecting any font and colour since it is entirely for personal use. We can add "Rear 129.5x183", "Spine 14x183" and "Front 129.5+183" in the main left, centre and right sections respectively.
We should obtain something similar to the following :
DVD Template
References :
Amaray, 2011. Product Specification. [online] Available at: <http://home.amaray.com/pdfs/Inlay%20&%20Booklet%20Specs%20complete.pdf>
[Accessed 13 January 2014].
Heritage Printing, 2010. Bleed cut and safety zone demystified. [online] Available at:
<http://www.heritageprintinginc.com/printing-self-help/cut-area-bleeds-and-safe-zone-demystified/>
[Accessed 13 January 2014].
Heritage Printing, 2010. Image resolution is key to brilliant printing results. [online] Available at:
<http://www.heritageprintinginc.com/printing-self-help/image-resolution-is-key-to-brilliant-printing-results/#more-494>
[Accessed 13 January 2014].
Heritage Printing, 2010. Acceptable file types. [online] Available at:
<http://www.heritageprintinginc.com/contact/acceptable-file-types/>
[Accessed 13 January 2014].