We’re currently working on a job for NANIIEBIM, which is fun. One of the things that we’ve found working with this particular creator is that they’re very keen that all their comic line art is as sharp edged as is humanly possible.
If you’re working with vectors (so basically, if you’re doing your entire book in Illustrator) this isn’t a problem (although if you’re doing that then you might well be clinically insane, so you might want to get that checked out). Bitmap images, however, are a different story. As soon as you put them into Indesign to create a print ready PDF you’ll likely find that the hard edges of your comic artwork have been blurred out a little bit. We’ve discovered – entirely by accident – a neat way of avoiding this that you might want to try…
Assuming that you’re working in Photoshop, this should work 100% of the time:
Method
1. Flatten your image once it’s done.
2. Save it as a PSD file (in the drop down menu in the Save As dialog on a mac this is the first option – it’s just labelled as “Photoshop”
3. Place the files into your indesign document and PDF according to the settings you’ve decided to use / have been asked to use. At comicprintinguk we tend to use our own custom made PDF preset (which creates MASSIVE files, but doesn’t mess with your artwork) – you can download that here: Comics PDF Preset (right or opt-click on the link and save to your desktop). UPDATE: WordPress apparently doesn’t want to host this in case it’s unsafe and causes the robot uprising or something. Email us instead and we’ll send it to you.
Actually, that’s pretty much it…. Any further questions – leave ’em in the comments!
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