Pre-press technology case solution (3)

CorelDRAW Imposition Technology

When it comes to the scope of prepress production, one has to mention the typesetting of books or magazines. Because of the standard and industry standardization of books and magazines, this method has certain skill and execution. At present, most of the printing factories are mostly in the way of manual imposition for the bookmaking and imposition of books and magazines. However, with the gradual promotion of electronic digital typography, computer typesetting will certainly replace the operation of manual imposition. For the selection of computer typesetting software, most of the domestic producers currently use PageMaker, Beida Founder and some graphic software such as CorelDRAW, Illustrator, and FreeHand. Some foreign-funded enterprises are in the process of introducing more advanced science to mainland production personnel. Professional publishing software, such as QuarkXPress. Here, apart from other typesetting software such as PageMaker and QuarkXPress, I chose to use CorelDRAW, a large-scale specialized software that combines the most extensive graphics and typesetting currently used in China, to introduce some simple typesetting.
CorelDRAW is a professional drawing software, and it is also a very powerful typesetting software. There are almost no books or publications that can be seen in the market. The vast majority of domestic graphic designers and prepress production personnel are all required to understand and master it, and another image processing software, Photoshop, constitutes an indispensable tool for graphic designers to take up posts.

1. Arrangement of layout

The default page layout of CorelDRAW's work environment is to use a type of A4 office paper that is widely used internationally. This type of paper is oriented to the office rather than the layout of book magazines, so we are using CorelDRAW to do the typesetting work of book and magazines. At this time, we must make some settings for this layout. Of course, we can also completely ignore the existence of this kind of paper, and use another better method to deal with the work environment settings we want to perform. That is to use some rectangular boxes. Visually represent the actual paper requirements we want.

The method introduced in this article is not based on the typesetting method required by CorelDRAW software itself. Instead, it is based on personal experience of the prepress work performed by the person. The purpose is to hope that some prepress work can be done. The production staff initiates an elaboration and opens up another layout for readers and friends. Therefore, if there are readers who are skeptical about the typesetting method of this article, it is not necessary to carry out some unnecessary suspicions, but it is entirely possible to find more suitable ones according to the methods described in this article and in combination with their practical experience in practical work. The typesetting method, of course, the typesetting method described in this article is believed to be more suitable for some beginners who have just engaged in prepress work.

For readers who are prepared to refer to this book using CorelDRAW for book publishing, this article does not have any technical prerequisites. It only requires readers and friends to call up the CorelDRAW program from the Windows Start → Programs menu.

After CorelDRAW is opened, the newly created desktop window is similar to Word and other office software, except for some menu items and tools.

Select the tool tool of the toolbox. Click any mouse in any position in the work window and drag it in a certain direction. A rectangle box will be drawn in the window. You can change the box in the lower right corner or just below the box. The size of the marker, use the mouse to hold it here and then drag in a direction to change the horizontal or vertical size of the box, here we set the box to 170mm x 257mm size (assuming the finished product size is A4 paper size and The distance between the four perimeters is 2cm). Click the left mouse button in this box to enter text.

In a normal book or magazine, it is not possible to have only simple symbols such as text. We will also insert some pictures and other objects according to the needs of different articles or layouts. In CorelDRAW, you can insert external images that have been processed by other software, or you can use your own powerful drawing function to create some images to insert. Regardless of the form of the imported images, we must embed them into the text.

The work of inserting pictures into text is very simple. Just select the picture you want to insert, and set it in the “Paragraph Text Wrap” on the Formatting toolbar. In this tool, CorelDRAW provides us with a rich text rewind function that can be left or right, or up and down, or four sides around the picture.

When inserting pictures into text, CorelDRAW's good pre-press automatization function has already pre-set the specifications for the specification of pictures and texts. Of course, we can also do some self-definitions according to our needs or the needs of the layout. Define the settings so that the picture and text are embedded more beautifully or reasonably. This is the effect of inserting a picture into text.

If all the text and picture content of the book or magazine to be edited is input, we need to put the lined content into the paper to print or print the printing press on the printing plate. This step is also very simple. We only need to select all the content that contains the objects such as pictures, and then use the alignment tool to align the content with the center of the paper, or align it to any place on the paper. This is a rendering that aligns the text to the center of the paper. This method is suitable for the software default page format to arrange multiple pages of continuous version.

The above mentioned layout by default by CorelDRAW means that only one page of finished pages is placed on a page. If you want to continue to arrange the content of the next page in the same file, you will need to add a new page number to display.

In addition to arranging the aligned graphics and texts to align with CorelDRAW's default paper center, you can also create a virtual page by drawing a rectangular box that matches the actual paper size so that you can place it on a page. More page content, such as press sheets, can place 16 or 32 page numbers on one page without adding a new page number.

In the page layout, a large number of items such as headers and footers are used. In general typesetting software, there is a good item that automatically arranges page headers and footers, but CorelDRAW does not have such a function. However, we can manually place this software with powerful graphics and layout features. At this point, CorelDRAW is slightly less than other software such as PageMaker, QuarkXPress, etc. But this is not to say that using CorelDRAW will not be able to do this. On the contrary, sometimes it may be more aesthetically pleasing.

If you want to arrange the header and footer items on the page, you can do the header and footer in the blank space next to it, and then arrange the header and footer to any of our wishes by copying, pasting, arranging, aligning, and other functions. One location. Figure 8 shows the page with the header and footer added.

2. Precautions for typesetting

Other layout settings in book typesetting are basically similar to office type software such as Word, Kingsoft Office, etc., such as paragraph, word and line spacing, font size change, cut and copy, etc., movement, alignment, first character sinking , tabs, tables (in CorelDRAW can make any complex form of the newspaper, but not like Excel and other professional watchmaking software can automatically calculate, can not automatically generate charts) and so on. All these operations can basically be realized by calling corresponding function items in the "Text" menu in the menu bar.

After the layout of graphics and text is completed, if it is placed according to the default page format of CorelDRAW, pages, gutters and other layout items can be automatically generated in the "print" item, and the page number sequence can be freely changed; if it is in the same The virtual page is adopted on the page surface (that is, the large rectangular frame such as paper is used to replace CorelDRAW's default actual paper). The layout of the graphic content is arranged. Some items such as page numbers need to be manually adjusted. Some people may think that manual adjustment is not suitable for book layout that does not apply to multi-page codes. In fact, this is redundant consideration: First, ordinary printers rarely receive thick books to print, but professional printers mainly print books. The typesetting software used is basically a software such as Founder Founder Software. Compared to widely distributed magazines or similar publicity albums, the page number is mostly between one or two hundred pages. Second, we can fully utilize CorelDRAW's powerful copy. Paste function to achieve; because CorelDRAW copy and paste functions are few software can match, although this "stupid" method is indeed too complicated for hundreds of pages of books, but it also brought us With a more free form of page layout, we can use this method to easily place the page number anywhere we want without worrying about the positional shift.

Most people who used to use PageMaker, Founder, QuarkXPress and other typesetting softwares think that using CorelDRAW for typesetting is too slow. In fact, this is completely a problem of not having a good number of pages in a file. Compared to the above software, CorelDRAW is actually a bit inconvenient for file speeds of more than 50 or 60 pages, but it actually puts dozens or even hundreds of pages into one file at the same time. It is very troublesome. They still have to pull out these pages and re-arrange them in order to make the printing plate. For prints with too many page numbers, we do not need to arrange all the page files in one file. We can adjust the number of pages in the file according to the actual situation at the time of printing. For example, the largest printing area of ​​the printing press can only print 16 pages. Page number, then we can arrange 16 page files into a file, this will not only speed up the speed of the file operation, but also facilitate the imposition of the plate to plate, so that a book of 300 pages, only need to do It can be as many as twenty files. Although at first glance it seems that there are too many files, it is not as convenient as a file such as PageMaker, but for the plate-making staff, one file is exactly the number of pages in a standard printing plate, and many plate-making personnel Also like to use CorelDRAW to spell the big version, if you use this grammar, a file is a version, it is very easy to operate.

There are a lot of typesetting staff who think that CorelDRAW does not have the convenience of PageMaker when arranging graphics. This is also an incomprehensible consequence of CorelDRAW. In CorelDRAW, the picture of the picture is better than CorelDRAW. We can use PageMaker. Patterns are arranged in such a way that they are more visible than in PageMaker. If PageMaker wants to achieve this clarity, PageMaker's speed advantage will be lost, and the pattern can be completely imported into the file. . The selection of whether or not to use a link when importing a pattern can be selected in the dialog box when the pattern is imported.

In professional typesetting software such as PageMaker and QuarkXPress, there is a "bookbinding" function that combines several files into one file. This is a pity in CorelDRAW and does not bring convenience to our typesetting work. At the same time, it also creates difficulties for us to arrange the catalogue of books - we must use a manual form to make a book catalogue.

The final arrangement of the layout document is to use the film to produce the printing plate. In this process, many people who had contact with the typesetting work ignored a serious problem - font compatibility. In addition to some large-scale printing plants, most printing companies can complete the work of typesetting, but rarely finish their own output, but send out to some output companies specializing in output jobs to produce film films or even produce printing plates. . At this time, when the document is transferred from the enterprise to the output company, the problem of font compatibility has to be considered. If it is only a two-page document, we can convert all the text into a curve, but this method is not suitable for multi-page code files; another method is to save all files as EPS format files, but this Although this method is good, it can sometimes bring about some other problems, but also increase the physical storage of the file; the best way is to store the existing CorelDRAW default Cdr in a memory (such as CD or MO). The file also stores the common Eps file in the industry, and also uses the fonts used in the file.