Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Gorman on November 14, 2010 at 4:41am

Hi Gary and all,

Yes I am interested in how case laminate holds up as well as how Lightning Source's perfect binding holds up. I'm thinking of sending them a 600 page book (8.5" x 11") that has been traditionally printed, sewn in signatures, etc. and held up wonderfully. I'd sure like to know that their books are not going to fall apart with moderate use...

Anyone with experience?

David

Permalink Reply by Gary Roberts on November 14, 2010 at 7:19am

David

In two years, none of the perfect bound books I've published have failed. Customers know I'll take a return without question and replace a problem without question. No one has asked for this yet. I have some in cloth hard cover which have also had not a single problem.

I suspect the case lam question arises from bookbinders, of whom I know quite a few. Their complaint is that the case lam bindings fail before cloth bound HC, but I think that is to be expected.

I'm planning on using case lam for books that will see heavy shop use (I publish books on early trades and crafts).

Permalink Reply by David Gorman on November 15, 2010 at 6:40pm

Hi Gary (and all),

That's good to hear. It's been my main concern. I've been doing independent publishing before so that is not new to me, but my previous publications were all traditionally offset-printed in high resolution, sewn and bound, and I;m now considering print-on-demand with Lightning Source. So I'm a bit nervous as to whether the quality of the printing job and binding job will be up to the standard I'd like.

Does anyone in this forum have experience with Lightning Source (good or bad) that they'd care to share?

My main reason to go print-on-demand is to get out of having to pay for a large inventory and having to do the order-taking and shipping myself...

By the way, happy to have found this group, and I look forward to egtting to know you all and sharing/learning with you...

warmly,
David

Permalink Reply by Gary Roberts on November 16, 2010 at 12:26am

David

I've published 8 titles for far with LS. The print quality is excellent for a digital printer. Which is the deciding factor. This isn't offset printing. The end quality is dependent upon what you send. Halftones have to be adjusted in Gaussian Blur to allow for the LPI of their printers, good clear fonts, etc. I've seen books come from LS of poor quality, but that was due to the file the publisher sent in.

Paper is good quality digital stock. The adhesive binding, so far as I've seen, is very good. I haven't had any returns as of yet for failed bindings, and that's for both hard cover and trade paperback.

Permalink Reply by David Gorman on November 16, 2010 at 8:32am

Thanks for that info, Gary. Makes me feel better.

They (Lightning Source) are sending some samples of color and B&W pages so I can see for myself...

you wrote:
"Halftones have to be adjusted in Gaussian Blur to allow for the LPI of their printers, good clear fonts, etc."

I saw that bit about the LPI on their specs but was unclear what it implied. I'm used to operating in dots-per-inch for resolution. Can you clarify for me what's involved in adjusting for their printer's LPI?

Text in my books will be very crisp - it is the illustrations I am concerned about.
I have few if any halftones at present in any of my books, but a lot of line art -- sometimes just 2-bit B&W, sometimes greyscale, sometimes simple color (that is, flat lines of black, red, blue or green). Some of the diagrams are simple and others are very detailed and lots of line shading (an example of complex is at: http://www.bodymoveable.com/sample-skull.htm)

The pages from my previous offset-printed books have been scanned from the original manuscript (or previous offset versions) at 1200dpi or 600dpi. The illustrations look good in greyscale, but not so good (a bit "scratchy") when reduced to 2-color line art (B&W).

If Lightning Source cannot print B&W books in greyscale (can they?), then I may have to halftone these graphics to keep them looking smoother than than they do in 2-bit B&W.

Can you give me some hints as to how to convert the se drawings to halftone at 150 LPI so I can see how they look? I have Photoshop CS4 and PaintShop Pro v11 if either of those are needed...

Thanks in advance for any tips you (or anyone else) can offer... Maybe there is already an article on this in the SPAN archives?

Permalink Reply by Gary Roberts on November 16, 2010 at 9:24am

LPI (lines per inch). DPI (dots per inch), PPI (pixels per inch) are simply the manner in which different hunks of hardware and software manage printing. You can pretty much ignore the differences and just think DPI when deciding on resolution. The best book on the subject is:

Real world scanning & halftones: industrial strength production techniques

Great as both an introduction and as an intermediate review.

First off, LS can handle grayscale images just fine. I wouldn't bother converting grayscale to bitmap (B&W). Resolution should always be 300 dpi for grayscale. Actually, you should never convert grayscale to bitmap as it will never look good.

All that said, the basics of scanning is that the output is only as good as the quality of the original, the scanner and the scan software. The cross-hatching in your images, if scanned, could present a problem when done on a digital printer (which prints at LPI. LPI can conflict with DPI to produce moire effects on the printed page). One solution for true halftones is to scan at 400 dpi Color (RGB) as 400 dpi approximates a halftone grid.

But, your images did not begin in life as halftones. It depends on how the scan was done. If you would like to pass along the brand and model of scanner and scan software, I can advise from there.

Gary

Permalink Reply by David Gorman on November 16, 2010 at 10:21am

Gary,

I really appreciate your help here...

Glad to hear that Lightning Source can use greyscale, though 300 dpi seems very low resolution to me (?). If I send them digital files at a higher resolution would they just downsample it anyway?

Thanks for your offer to advise - my scanner is an HP Scanjet G4050. I usually scan directly into Corel PaintShop Pro version 11 at 1200 dpi using the WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) driver, but can also scan using a TWAIN driver.

Then I adjust the levels of the scan to make the page background white and darken the lines so that it approximates the original. I also then clean any specks or other artifacts, and save at 1200 dpi.

I then resample to 600 dpi, and save again, then resample again to 300 dpi and save a third time so that I have 3 saved versions (1200 dpi, 600 dpi and 300 dpi).

Permalink Reply by David Gorman on November 16, 2010 at 10:41am

PS. Just ordered "Real world scanning & halftones" too...

Permalink Reply by Gary Roberts on November 17, 2010 at 10:27pm

Houston, we have a problem.

300 dpi for grayscale and 600 dpi for bitmap (1 bit B&W) are commercial printing standards. RGB and CMYK are 300 dpi. Anything higher and the printer will downsample.

Your problems are:

The scanner: HP scanners, while ubiquitous, are not very good at imaging for print. Epson and Canon are excellent. I've used both brands and prefer the Epson Perfection V500. Canon output always seems a little too sharp and saturated when it comes to the final conversion to CMYK commercial printer standards.

The software: Corel and WIA are not scan software. You have little control over the image specs and in the end, the better the initial scan, the better the final image. Vuescan is affordable and, quite honestly, better than some of the more expensive 'pro' software out there. http://www.hamrick.com/

You're scanning at one resolution, then up or down sampling multiple times. Depending on format, you may be introducing image degradation factors. Tiff won't degrade during saves and resamples. Jpeg will. PNG is not supposed to degrade, but it can as not all software handles it properly.

When you scan, the HP scan software does it's thing, WIA does it's thing and Corel does it's own thing. The end result is an image that has been 'handled' multiple times, each step with little control over the output specs. Switching to Vuescan will eliminate all that mess. Vuescan replaces the scanner OE software, is fully customizable, is fast and produces excellent primary images in Tiff, Jpeg, Gif or PNG.

Photoshop Elements will handle post-scan image work much better than will Corel. There is a Convert To Black & White function which is excellent. I use it frequently in prepping images for print, for PDF or for the web. There are some tricks to prepping images in Elements, but that is another tale.

There is no need to scan high and resample. It's best to scan at 300 dpi for grayscale and color, and 600 dpi for bitmap. The higher resolutions have to do with scanning transparencies and relates to the final height width dimensions and not to resolution. Real World Scanning explains all of this. It gets weird in that different computers and different monitors will process and display images differently, so you can't go by what you see on the screen. We're actually talking PPI (pixels per inch) for screen resolution as well as height and width and DPI for image depth (basically, the amount of data detail held within the image).

There are tricks, such as scanning with descreening at 400 dpi in color or grayscale for halftones, down sampling to 300 dpi. But that depends on the original image. Sometimes you can scan at 300 dpi with descreening and have no problems. Even so, what you see on the monitor will not be what you see in print. Again, there are tricks to handle this problem.

As you see, it's a mess of details that the majority of scanner companies don't want you to know about. In the end, it's not really all that complicated if you get a basic understanding of scanning, halftones, image specs and post-scan image processing for print.

So... I was asked at a local library group to put together a brief review of digitizing, or digital conversion from print (or microfilm) to digital. I'm working something up which I can also post here. I did have a complete guide once, but that was when I was working at a research library that required I leave everything behind when I retired.

If someone really wants to understand the why, Real World Scanning is great. So is this website: http://www.scantips.com/

But you really don't have to know all the little bits and pieces if basic rules are followed, which is what I'm going to put together in a one or two page brief.

Have I given you a headache or did this make sense?

Gary

Permalink Reply by David Gorman on November 18, 2010 at 8:07pm

Hi Gary,

No headache, and you're beginning to make sense, i.e. the scales are falling from my eyes... You're right too, in that real information about scanning is not out there up front when buying machines... But what you have written is a great help.

Please do finish your guide to how to scan for dummies... I'm sure there are a lot more people than myself in need...

I take your point about HP scanners, and am checking out the Epson Perfection V500 (quite cheap really at $150-180).

I have also downloaded Vuescan and am testing it, though I can't see a lot of difference. This is where your guide might be handy to specify which settings are best.

I was saving my scans as TIF files and resampling from 1200dpi to 600dpiu to 300dpi without closing the file so there is no degradation (other than that from the actual resample operation) since it is the same original scan used to make all the different resolutions.

I am eagerly awaiting my copy of "Real World Scanning" but Amazon says it will be up to 4 weeks (sigh). In the meantime, I'll check out the Scantips web site.

Thanks for all these pointers and help. I certainly look forward to your guide so I know how to use Vuescan. Thank goodness I joined up here before I spent months scanning my 600 page book the wrong way...