Printing Services Questions:

  • How can custom book bindery make my booklet look more sophisticated when I use printing services?

  • How do I avoid transparency, overprint and other issues with printing?

  • I’m not sure whether to choose digital printing or offset printing. Which one is best for me?

  • It’s important that my blues don’t turn out purple. How do I change color settings in order to prevent color issues from happening before sending my files for printing?

  • What are the steps to setting up an Akuafoil file for printing? What’s the difference between Akuafoil and cold foil printing?

  • What is Pantone color matching? Do using Pantone colors change my printing job?

  • What kinds of files would you allow me to send for printing and is there a specific color mode requirement? Also, how should my bleed marks and crop marks be arranged?

  • What's color banding in printing and why does it happen?

  • What’s a good rich black formula and what are the advantages of using it for printing services at J.M. Field Marketing?

  • What’s a grayscale image? Before using printing services at J.M. Field Marketing, how do I convert to grayscale in a document with CMYK?

  • What’s the difference between digital printing and offset printing?

Answer:

Color banding is a problem that results in color distortions of your presentation, as a result of colors bunching together at a low resolution. Due to the undesired effect of color bunching from banding, the result of printing is colors that aren’t smooth. This means that your finished project could have vertical lines and patterns that weren’t in your original design. There are different factors regarding banding, such as the program, picture formats, gradient steps and color depth.

Printing Services Color Banding

You can fix this before submitting files for printing by adjusting the color depth on your computer and checking the digital files prior to sending them to us. Color banding usually happens from using fewer bits per pixel, also known as BPP. In order to fix this and prevent color banding from ruining your print job, consider increasing how many bits per color channel that you use. If you set your graphics to 24-bit, instead of 8-bit or 16-bit, you shouldn’t run into problems with your printing.

What’s color banding in printing and why does it happen? was last modified: February 24th, 2015 by Kara