Page 574 - Xara Designer Pro X17

574 Printing

Overprint this ink: This duplicates the check box in the main SEPARATIONS dialog. It
protects the selected color from being knocked-out, so works in the reverse to object-
level overprinting. Overprinting is described later in the chapter.

Print spot colors as process colors: Desktop printers and some printing processes can
only print process (CMYK) colors. Select this option to print any spot colors as their
equivalent CMYK color. Note: some spot colors look very different when output as
CMYK, and it removes the ability to use PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE (Xara Designer Pro
only) colors or any special inks. The main use of this option is when checking your
artwork on a local printer.

Overprinting

If you are producing color documents that will be printed on litho printing presses, you
may find overprint useful. Printing presses are mechanical devices with the inevitable
slight misalignments when they are running. Overprinting lets you overcome these
misalignments. For example, your job may have a black circle on a cyan background.
When the document is imageset, the circle appears on the black separation and the cyan
separation has a non-printing area under the circle (the technical term is that the circle
"knocks-out" the background). The knock-out is the same size as the circle.

A black circle knocks-out out the cyan background
If the two plates do not line up exactly during printing, the circle will slightly offset from
the knock-out (known as "out of register") and a small white gap can appear.
This example is exaggerated to illustrate the
out of register printing, but even thin lines can
be noticeable with dark colors.

Overprinting compensates for this problem. Xara Designer Pro X has two types of
overprinting: object level and ink level.