Printing proofs, tiles and presets from Layout by Zaweba
Print from Layout by Zaweba with tiling for oversized pages, thumbnails, printer's marks, scaling and separations, and save your own print presets.
PDFs go to the print shop, but plenty of printing still happens on the office or home printer. Proofs for a client meeting, a quick check of a spread at actual size, a poster tiled across sheets of A4 to see how it reads on the wall. Printing in Layout by Zaweba handles these jobs, with options for tiling, thumbnails, printer's marks, scaling and separations, and presets to save the settings you use.
Tiling large pages across several sheets
Tiling splits a page bigger than your paper across several sheets. A poster or a large map can be printed in pieces and taped together, so you can see it at its real size before committing to a large format print. Headline sizes, how far away the text can be read, and whether a photo holds up when big are all much easier to judge at full size than scaled down on a screen.
Tape the tiles carefully and stand back. It is a low tech step that catches problems a scaled proof hides.
Thumbnails for an overview
Thumbnails print several pages on one sheet. They are ideal for checking the flow of a magazine or brochure: how spreads follow each other, whether colour and pictures are balanced through the document, and where sections start. Editors often like a thumbnail print of the whole issue to plan from, and it is a quick way to share the shape of a job in a meeting.
Printer's marks and scaling
Printer's marks add crop marks and other guides round the page, so a proof shows where the page will be trimmed. Printing with marks on paper bigger than the page lets you trim a proof by hand and see the finished size, which is the best way to judge margins.
Scaling shrinks or enlarges the page to fit the paper. Use it when a page is too big for your printer and you don't need actual size, for instance an A3 spread checked on A4. Remember that a scaled proof shows layout but not true size; for checking type sizes and how a page will feel in the hand, print at 100 percent or tile.
Printing separations
Separations print each ink as its own page. On a desktop printer that won't give you a press result, but it is a practical way to check what is on each plate. A spot colour that should only appear on a logo, a black text layer that should overprint, or a stray object in the wrong colour shows up clearly on its plate. It complements the on screen separations preview with something you can hold and mark up.
Print presets
Print presets save a set of print settings by name. Three are built in, and you can save your own. A preset for a client proof with marks, one for thumbnails of the whole document, and one for tiling posters means each kind of print is one choice away instead of a dozen settings each time.
Mistakes people make when printing proofs
Judging colour from an office printer is the main one. Desktop printers don't match the press. Use proofs for layout, text and size, and use soft proofing and the print shop's own proofs for colour.
Forgetting to turn scaling off leaves a proof that looks fine but hides a too small font. Check the scale before printing type proofs.
Printing pages instead of spreads for a magazine misses problems across the spine. Print spreads when you need to judge how facing pages work together.
Printing and PDF export serve different jobs. Print for proofs and for the things you'll make yourself; export PDF with the right preset for the print shop. Both start from the same document, so a proof printed this morning shows exactly what the PDF will contain this afternoon, once preflight is clear.
