Week 12

In the previous weeks during the lessons, there were many elements that I had questions about but did not have the time to investigate so I liked that I had a chance to do that this week. For one, I was not sure what linking images in Adobe did but when we were working on some projects I noticed that linked images and embedded ones acted differently. Linked images can be modified with the transformation tools effects, like the drop shadow but you can not select individual parts of it. When I did the $20 bill assignment, I had to embed the image in order to work with the image trace tool. 

I was also curious to further understand CMYK. I knew the first three letters stood for cyan, magenta, and yellow but was unaware that the K is for key, as in a black plate. The way CMYK prints work is by creating tiny dots of those colors to create the image, which reminded me of pointillism but with a limited color palette.  

Watching the digital pre-press operator video was eye-opening. I learned a lot of things I hadn't known about the printing industry and its various roles. The pre-press operator has to organize the graphic work into something compatible with the printer. There were two printers that were shown-- the indigo press and the traditional press. The traditional press needs someone there to keep inputting ink and keep it running. Because of the name, I thought the traditional press was going to be a lot slower than the indigo one, but both are very efficient in printing magazines.