Printing your own comic! I need help!

[RentAHero]

Alright everyone! Your good pal Elio needs a little professional help! Long story short, I finally after three weeks completed my first issue of a comic I?ve been dying to do. I have seventeen separate pages that are inked and all ready to go. Here is my question, how do I take all these pages and turn them into a 8.5 X 11 book, folded in half?

I understand the process, but there are a few things missing in my head that I was hoping someone really nice could answer for me!



My pages are on 14 x 17 Bristol, but I?ve only drawn on 10x15.
Now 1st, what dpi do I scan by, what should the size be?

2nd, In Photoshop, what is the document size I want to work with? How large should the pages be? When I make a document page to put in two scanned pages what size should that be so it prints out 8.5x11 with a .5 inch margin? When do I add text and screen tone? When I resized it, or when its still large?

3rd, to make sure printing is nice and clean what size do I print off of? Do I print them as jpg or Photoshop files?

Also, what are some other dos and don?t of this comic adventure? I?m very excited to finally put this together and give them away at conventions and my local comic books stores!



Thanks everyone in advance! You have no idea how much this means to me!

[drugmassacre]

i'm not an expert at this stuff, but I can offer SOME help I think

for print, always scan at 300 dpi or higher. 300 is usually fine, but I've heard some people say they scan at 600. You can scan in as b&w or greyscale then punch the blacks up - you should experiment with these parameters and figure out which results you like better

I would definately do everything that you're going to do to it visually while it's at it's original size, then shrink it down to actual size

as far as the setting up the pages - how are you having this printed? If you're taking it to a print shop to be digitally printed, it's best to half them all sized individually at 8" x 5" and then laid out into a single file in Quark or Illustrator (so they don't have to prep every page seperately). if you're going to print out a copy yourself, just create a new 8.5" x 11" file with 300 dpi resolution, resize your pages to 8" x 5" and dump them in two at a time.

Best format for printing is TIFF. Be sure you flatten your image (in terms of layers) before printing. You might want to SAVE AS another version to do this in case you ever need to go back and make alterations to your pages

And make sure you lay out pages in the correct order - first paper - page one on right, last page on left, etc.

hope some of this helps

[Attezarf]

Hello Elio!

All of your questions are related to what level of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) that you're planning to work in.. Will you be getting this published thru a professional printer? Or are you planning to make the parts yourself, down at a self-serve Print Shop.. And assemble the individual books yourself?
There are serious differences in the answers to your questions, based on this important facet!

>>Now 1st, what dpi do I scan by, what should the size be?<<

300dpi would seem a safe minimum.. A printer I worked with once, told me that 250dpi was more than enough, when doing 'Offset Printing' which works on a lines-per-inch process.. Many printers also offer a cheaper Xerox 'docutech' -style of Digital printing. It doesn't require files that're quite as high-rez..
I remember reading an article about Digital Chameleon, once. They were a Winnipeg-based computer coloring company that does(did?) a lot of the coloring for DC and Marvel. They used to swear by scanning/using 400dpi files. They argued that it gave you the best balance between "control" over the Image characteristics. While still maintaining a file that wasn't too large & unwieldy to work with.. re: Photoshop processing time, loading, etc..
I used both 400 and 600 dpi files in a Sketchbook I published a few years ago. Looking back on the pages, I really can't tell which ones were which, to be honest. And I doubt that anyone else could, either..

>>2nd, In Photoshop, what is the document size I want to work with? How large should the pages be? When I make a document page to put in two scanned pages what size should that be so it prints out 8.5x11 with a .5 inch margin? When do I add text and screen tone? When I resized it, or when its still large?<<

The "classic" 6- or 9-panel comic-book grid, is usually published at 6" x 9" dimensions. But you could make them slightly smaller or bigger, depending on your own preference.. Your 10" x 15" original art pages would need to be scanned in, at 60% scale. You can purchase handy 'Proportion Scale' wheels at your local Art Supply store, that'll help you calculate other sizes/scanning percentages, should choose something larger or smaller..
Most professional printers will ask you to set up the entire comic-book as a digital file document. And every printer has their own preferences. It's best to ask first, rather than wasting time creating something you will have to shoehorn into THEIR production protocols.. Find a printer. And find ways to keep it simple for them. There'll be fewer surprises for you, at the end of the process..
If you're using an application to put-together the entire book.. My experience has been that many prefer 'InDesign' or 'Quark'. Other programs like the old 'Pagemaker' (which I still use a lot) will allow you to assemble all of the Text Balloons and Screens that you need. If you're scanning in these elements as more 'original art'.. You'll have to make sure you do so, at the same Scaling ration, that you did for the other Art pages..

>>3rd, to make sure printing is nice and clean what size do I print off of? Do I print them as jpg or Photoshop files?<<

If you're outputting 'Master Pages' that you plan to xerox from, at a self-serve print shop.. You should probably print them out as TIFF files. But if you're assembling an 'InDesign' or 'Quark' document, the KIND of file is less important, than maintaining/streamlining the 'resolution' of your Image files. Some printers actually prefer 'Adobe Acrobat' documents, because it allows them to spend less time/hassle sorting thru Font Files, etc. 'Adobe Acrobat' documents use pdf. files..
It's always a good idea to have "backups" for all of your Image files. Don't send original files to a Printer.. they may lose them. Always use/send copies.. If you find printers asking you to "send" files via the Internet? Again, be mindful of maintaining 'resolution' protocols/formats you've been following.. JPEGs and PDF's travel over the Net more easily than TIFFs and other weightier image files. But if you can, it'd probably be preferrable to burn your entire comic-book document to a CD. And leave THAT with them..

>>Also, what are some other dos and don?t of this comic adventure? I?m very excited to finally put this together and give them away at conventions and my local comic books stores! <<

There's some pretty good reading on the subject of "Making Mini-Comics" over at Tom Spurgeon's website.. Much of it, relates to self-publishing your own comic-book. The weblink is:
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/all_about_comics/all_about/77/
I noticed in one of the recent 'PREVIEWS' (Diamond Distribution) catalogs, that Dave (Cerebus) Sim has rereleased his excellent 1997 "Guide To Self-Publishing" book. If you can find it at your comic shop, a lot of good info still exists in it! Though the self-publishing retail landscape has changed considerably, during the interim..

Hope that helps, a little.. Good Luck!

-- Rich

[em...]

The question of the correct dpi for scanning works like this:

The ideal resolution for any printed matter is for the ppi (pixels per inch) to be twice the lpi (lines per inch) dot screen ruling that the job will be printed at, when the artwork is at actual printed size.

Truth be told, you can get away with the ppi being only 1.5 times the lpi without any discernable image quality difference (I'd be hard pressed to spot the difference, and I've worked in print design for over 17 years)

The vast majority of full colour and greyscale printing is printed at 150 or 175lpi, so scanning at 300ppi should be sufficient - and a lot of the kind of sketchbooks that artists sell at conventions are printed at a lower dot screen anyway, so it's more than enough.

I'm not sure if you know what I mean by lpi and dot screen, so I'll explain - if you look closely at any printed matter with reproductions of photographs or tonal artwork, you will see that the image is made up of little dots. That is what's known as a dot screen - the finer the screen (and smaller the dots), the sharper the image will appear. Newspapers and such are usually printed at a coarser screen ruling (85-110lpi) because of the absorbency of the cheap paper, whereas higher quality work on a coated paper is printed at a higher screen ruling


The exception to this is if what you are printing is purely black and white line art - in this case it's best to scan it as high as 800-1200ppi, and make sure it's a bitmap, to retain the crisp edges.


But what I would say is this: if you are having it printed at a printshop, speak to them first about how they would like it presented, before doing anything else.

[Blaren]

Yeah. What i learned is:

Colour print: 300 dpi
B&W lineart print: 600 dpi

So scanning at those resolutions should be enough. But its not wrong to kick it up a notch and scan it at even better resolutions.

[Dredgulus]

Hello everyone, I been a member of this board before, but school got in the way.

This is what I learned, scanning at 300 ppi (dpi) is a safe bet for almost any job. Just remember, the higher the resolution the more space the file takes up. Also, it does give a better picture at higher resolutions. Also, remember that on the computer your are looking and the RBG scale and when you go to print change to the CMYK scale or four color. If you wantto test what it looks like go to your local Kinko's(just remeber at this place service is not the greatest.) I you can afford it get a printer that can print to 11x17.

[Patrick]

I think everybody pretty much covered all the general considerations but I wanted to add a couple of things too. Here is some info on printing standard comic format size, if that's what you're looking for:

For standard nonbleeding pages, the image area should be approximately 6 x 9". If you simply want your nonbleeding pages to be centered on the page, there is no need to add crop marks to your sheets. For pages with bleed, provide crop marks and allow 1/8" bleed beyond the dimensions of the page (6 7/8 x 10 1/2" total image size for a 6 5/8 x 10 1/4" book).

Here's where I got that info:
http://www.icomics.com/hbps/index.htm

Hope that helps too.

[bat one]

Soon as I got my mini comics done, I'm just gonna sit back and let these guys http://www.comixpress.com/ take care of it for me. Seems really affordable and all I'll have to worry about is meeting their specifications. Maybe this will help?

[drugmassacre]

As a warning, several people on the board have complained about EXTREMELY slow turn-around time from comixpress, like over 2 months slow

[Ardor]

I've been working in the printing industry for ten years. (No I'm not trying to brag. For the most part it's sucked the life out of me And what you've seen posted here is true, for the most part. If I was scanning in a photo for printing on a professional press I would scan it in at 300 dpi.

HOWEVER! If I was scanning in line art I would scan it in at least 600 dpi grey scale. If you're going to color your work in photoshop and use computer gradients I would work at least at 600 dpi. When printed computer gradients can "band". Instead of a smooth blend from dark to light, or one color to another, they will break up into bands of colors going from light to dark (or one color to another).

The fix for this is to either work at a higher dpi or to put a little noise in the gradient. If you look in Photoshop you'll see a noise filter. Use a setting of 1 or .5 if possible. I prefer to use the higher dpi method though because it'll keep your work clean.

This is gonna make some LARGE file sizes but it can't be helped.

Talk to your printer. Not a sales person though. Ask to speak to someone in the prepress department and find out exactly how they like their files and what their requirements are. If you submit your files the way they like them you get a better chance of having your work printed the way you want it. Also it might turn out to be less expensive because if they have to do work on the files they're probably going to charge you.

[snug]

Here's a warning for you: Check your content against your intended printer's standards. They may reject you for "morals/deceny/acceptable material" clauses.

I made a deal with a professional, reputable printing house three months ago to print my comic. They had a general idea of the content. Come press time, someone higher up the management chain took a look at our proof and deemed it "vulgar" and "against what they find acceptable to print."

It's so tame by today's standards, but it had swearing and murder (gee, a comic where someone dies... imagine that...). No sex at all, unfortunately

Since this happened to me, I've spoken with others who have had their material censored by printers (some had the same content as me, some ran into printers who had issues with comics dealing with sexuality and even some who wouldn't print comics dealing with homosexuality, even if they weren't overtly sexual).

I'm not debating their right to choose what to print, but I do think if they have such a stringent "morals" clause, they need to inform their clients. They have nothing posted on their site and no time in the three months did they attempt to thoroughly review our content.

So... check it out before you find yourself at print date without a printer

[em...]

The reason that some printers will refuse to print certain things is because, if someobody takes offence at what is in a publication and decides to take legal action, they can be held partially liable along with the published (who would be you).

There was a comicbook a while (maybe a couple of decades ago) back, Skin by Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy, which had a couple of different printers refuse to handle it, before it was eventually published.

[snug]

That is potentially a reason, but not the reason why they refused us.

There were no legal issues with our material. There are millions of publications with swearing, and the "violence" was far less than is shown on primetime television. Doesn't nearly give Bones a run for its money. It was simply on "moral" grounds, ie their moral opinion of our work.

[em...]

The amount of swearing, nudity or violence doesn't make something moral or immoral - it's the context.

At the end of the day, it's their prerogative to refuse to do something if they so wish.