Prepress imposition and drawing of die patterns

CorelDRAW is a powerful and comprehensive software package with many functions such as graphic drawing, image processing, web page creation, typography, and cartoon animation.

One of the most widely used applications of CorelDRAW in China is the preparatory work for the printing and typesetting of publications, commonly known as prepress operations. Although this is just a part of CorelDRAW's features, but because we deal with other work, we will habitually call other software, such as processing images, we will immediately use Photoshop, make web pages will use Dreamweaver, handle animation will use Flash, etc. Etc.; So here, I will use a small card as an example, from the graphic layout to the drawing of the die pattern for a brief introduction.

Imposition work:

Before printing and typesetting, we must first analyze some of the objects of work, such as what paper to use, what presses to prepare, what processes to use, whether to perform any art processing or any special process, and so on. In order to save space, I will save them.

1. Open CorelDRAW software and the system will automatically create a file.

2. From the toolbox on the left, select the fifth position - the Rectangle tool. Draw a rectangle next to the designated paper on the system. The size is not limited. Then change its size to 125 x 185mm on the Properties toolbar (the finished size will be 120 x 175mm after folding)

3, use the selection tool to select the rectangle you just drew, hold down the Ctrl key and use the mouse to drag the rectangle to the left, until the rectangle appears on the screen and the same rectangle as the original box, the left key does not hold down the right button, that is, the left side of the original rectangle One other rectangle appears.

4, in the right box put a picture has been processed, the left half of the box plus company information text. Form a card pattern.

5. Select all objects on the card and press Ctrl+G or Group under the Arrange menu. Group objects to make it an object. To facilitate the follow-up project operation.

6. Select the selection tool and draw a rectangle in a blank place. Adjust the size to 546 x 787mm (positive folio size to indicate paper).

7. In the folio box, draw a rectangle with a size of 526 x 777mm (the upper and lower sides each have a 5mm hemorrhage, leave a 15mm bite on the left side, and leave a 5mm hemorrhage on the right side, indicating that this is a printed version. The core is the effective printing area). Select both rectangles, select "Align" and "Distribution" in the "Arrangement" menu. In the dialog box that pops up, select "Right" for the horizontal item and "Middle" for the vertical item to align the two rectangles.

8, because the operation of the previous step, the right side of the two rectangles are close together, but we are required to be 5mm away from the distance, so need to be adjusted. If manually adjusted, its position is not accurate enough. Select the "Pick" tool. When the guard is not selecting any object, adjust the fine adjustment distance on the property toolbar to 5mm, as shown in Figure 6, then select the rectangle of 526 x 777mm, and click the left arrow. The rectangular frame is separated from the other rectangular frame by 5mm so that there is also a 5mm bleeding position to the right of the paper.

9. Since the finished size of the card is 120 x 175mm folded, plus the bleeding position, the full size of the design draft is 250 x 185mm. Now we are going to put the card on the paper. Select the grouped card, select the inner box on the paper, select "Alignment and Distribution" in the "Arrangement" menu, select the left item for the horizontal item, and check the "Up" item for the vertical item to place the card and the inner box. Align the upper left corner; select the card, copy and paste it, then adjust the rotation value in the property bar to 180 to flip it, so that the two card's pattern part is opposite; adjust the fine adjustment distance is 250mm, select the paste on the card, click the right direction Arrows, two cards become the pattern of the arrangement of the pattern, this method is called "head to head" imposition.

Because the relationship between temperature and humidity during printing often causes the paper to expand and contract, in order to minimize the appearance of inaccurate patterns caused by this reason, we should try to close the mouth of the pattern or color complex parts. Bit.ä¿Ÿ After the first line above the line is set, then call the "Displacement" option in the "Arrangement" menu. In the pop-up dialog box, set the vertical distance to the height of the card 185mm, because we want to shift it down, So set it to -185mm, then select the two cards and press "Apply to Remake Items". Each time you press it, you will copy a pair of cards down and the position is also very accurate. After pressing three consecutive presses, four pairs of eight cards appeared on the layout, and the paper was no longer in line.

At this point, the imposition is completed. The specification is “Fighting 8/Positive Folio”. Although there are some wasted papers, this situation is unavoidable. If we want to reduce the waste of paper, we can use pens and papers to budget before we make paper, such as this example. The size of the printing surface of the card after the eight-type stamping is 500 x 740mm, and the facing size of the positive paper is 546 x 787mm, and the facing surface of the large-sized paper is 597 x 889mm. The facing size of the special paper is 444 x 634mm, apparently the waste of other papers seems to be greater, so it is appropriate to use positive paper.

Drawing of die pattern:

Completion of the imposition does not mean that the composing work is over. We have another very important job, the drawing of the die pattern.

After each printing product is finished in the printing process, it must be divided into individual finished products. For example, the above example of imposition will be divided into eight finished cards after completion of printing. It is not possible to use shears to cut the cuts. We have to produce another version of the cut-off template. Of course, in the general printing industry, you don't have to do your own knife mold. You only need to draw the knife mold line, and then send it to the knife mold factory to make the knife plate from the knife mold factory, and then get it back to the beer machine to beer. Press, and then tick the edge of the paper and put it neatly to the customer.

The drawing of the die line is done on the basis of the printing plate. In fact, it is to draw the line of the actual finished product on the layout of a bleeding plane (without coloring). Let's start the die line. The drawing:

1. The finished size of the card we set above is 120 x 175mm after folding, and 250 x 185mm (containing bleeding) after unfolding.

2. Draw a rectangle with a rectangle tool with a size of 239 x 175mm. Select the rectangle and select the card on the upper left corner of the printing plate. Press the "C" key to align vertically, and press the "E" key to align horizontally. The rectangle is at The center of the card. Adjust the trimming distance to 0.5mm, select the rectangle you just drew, and click the right arrow to move it 0.5mm to the right (because the rectangle does a shrink action, so if you do not move 0.5mm to the right, there will be two sides Each was 5.5mm of bleeding, but our goal was to have a 5mm right side bleeding and a 6mm left side bleeding). Select the Betz curve tool, draw a line with a vertical height of 175mm, align it vertically to the right of the rectangle, adjust the fine adjustment value to 120mm, select the vertical line, click the left direction arrow, the vertical line will divide the rectangle into right 120mm, left 119mm, as shown in Figure 9. Here, the front side is classified as 120mm, and the back side is set as 119mm, because it is feared that the back side of the beer after the beer pressure is not allowed to cause the front side to be out of the front. After reduction of 1-2mm, it will not worry about the finished product meeting. There is a flaw in the back (that is, the back of the card seen from the front of the card).

3, select the rectangle (the border is set to a solid line that requires cutting) and the vertical line (the border is set to a dotted line, which means only indentation without cutting) and grouped into an object, call the "distortion" dialog box in the "arrangement" , In the "position" item, set the vertical value to -185mm, the horizontal value is 0, then click "apply to the remake object" three times, the left card die line is basically completed; select the four newly created rectangle , In the "Transformation" dialog box set the horizontal value of 249mm, the vertical item is set to 0, and then click "Apply to the remake object", that is, copy the other four die lines; the eight card patterns and the previous settings The positioning rectangle of the mouthpiece and bleeding position was removed, resulting in only eight rectangular boxes remaining on the paper surface.

At this point, both the printing plate and the knife plate have been completed, and the follow-up work is to produce a film. Normally, four color chips of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black are printed, and one blade is added. If any other process is to be printed, it can be based on Need another film. Because the release and platemaking belong to the work of the printing room, the prepress operation is now complete.