I can’t express my gratitude for such info! Really thank you!
I hate the fact that in graphic design school never told us about ink coverage (we have 1 year studies to go, though).
Well, I imported the image to Photoshop, and with the info tool I noticed that some areas had 360% ink coverage!
So by using Curves and replacing fine-tuning the percentage of K in some areas, I managed to keep ink coverage below 280%.
Of course the poster looks more washed out compared to the social media version.
I can’t wait to print test my pdfs (I have many version, with many tweaks) to see which looks the best.
Thank you again!
I probably tossed too much information at you without sufficiently explaining it. Different printers will give different advice on total ink coverage that their experience has determined is most appropriate for their presses and the paper stock being used. In addition, depending on the company that’s used, printers will adjust the total ink coverage as part of their prepress preparations. Quite honestly, most designers don’t concern themselves with these things and let their printers worry about them. I mentioned it primarily because you specifically brought it up as an area of concern when you mentioned thinking the dark areas might fill in.
When I’m working directly with a printer, I can ask them for recommendations regarding this kind of thing. When I’m simply providing files to a client for them to have printed, I typically play things a bit safer. A 280% ink coverage is generally pretty safe, so when I’m working in Illustrator or InDesign where I can easily control ink percentages, I’ll do it. With photos, I don’t worry about it as much unless the photo has large dark areas that might fill in. I don’t know how you produced that background pattern and whether it was done in a vector app or in Photoshop, so I kept my comments rather general.
I’m also much more familiar with offset printing than digital printing, so I tend to think in offset terms. I don’t know which printing technology will be used to print your poster. If it’s a short-run job of, say, under 1,000 copies, it’ll probably print digitally. Bigger jobs typically print offset since, at larger quantities, it becomes cheaper. @PrintDriver is much better acquainted with digital printing than I and is in a better position to provide advice about file preparation regarding digital printing.
You mentioned converting your files to Photoshop to test the ink coverage. so from that, I’m guessing the background was prepared originally as vector art. In any case, what Photoshop indicates isn’t necessarily what the total ink coverage will be since Photoshop and the other Adobe apps will, as I mentioned, adjust things a bit depending on your color profile settings (another subject, which you probably ought to look up if you haven’t done so already).
Summing this up, total ink coverage is something most designers don’t worry about. On a background like yours, though, I probably would concern myself with it, but that’s just me based on 40 years of doing this kind of thing. Most printers will handle it themselves and prefer that designers not meddle with things they know little about. Adobe Acrobat, by the way, contains some excellent tools for measuring total ink coverage.
This isn’t the first time the subject’s come up here. Here’s a link to a past discussion on it. More than anything, it’s just something to be aware of when it could potentially be a problem, as it might be on your background.
I found this video too, which might contain some good information. I didn’t watch the entire thing, so I’m not vouching for it. However, it does discuss these issues, so it might be worth watching if you’re still curious.
