By Paul Daughetee

Last week I went over the hardware a production office needs to put a comic book together. Today we’ll be covering the software and processes involved in getting your comic ready to print or to submit to an online publisher.

SOFTWARE

Here at Kymera Press, we use Adobe products almost exclusively in the production of our comics. However, for all of the Adobe products I list below, there are applications from other companies that can do the job equally well.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC – All of our freelance artists submit their finished artwork in a digital format—typically either Photoshop’s native PSD format or the TIFF format. Photoshop will likely be what you use to verify the submitted art meets your specifications. If it does not, you may need to use it to get the art to meet your specs . You’ll also need this if your production office is creating ads or other content for your book.

ADOBE INDESIGN CC – InDesign is the application you’ll be using to pull all of your art together in book form. It’s forte is the creation and layout of digital projects such as your comic book. When you’re done with your layout, you’ll use InDesign to export your book to a PDF document; a PDF being the preferred file format for most printers and digital publishers.

ADOBE INCOPY CC – InCopy is software used for copy editing. It feeds your copy directly into the layout you’ve created with InDesign. Although it’s not strictly necessary, it is quite useful as it allows copy editing without directly modifying the InDesign files; the InCopy files will simply be links that appear in your InDesign layout.

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CC – You’ll use Illustrator for creating illustrations using vector graphics that are scalable without any loss of resolution. This is very useful if you’re publishing online and need that ability to scale. You may find some artists prefer Illustrator as their primary drawing/painting tool and it is often used by comic book letterers.

PROCESSES

SPECIFICATIONS – You’re going to be taking art that’s passed through the systems of numerous creative types and trying to fit it into your book’s format. To ease that process, it’s imperative that you provide your artists with a detailed specification that delineates exactly what you want from them when they deliver their files to you.

ART PAGE SIZES AND RESOLUTIONS – For Gates of Midnight, we specified that we want our pencils and inks drawn/scanned at 300/600 dpi and at 150 percent of the finished size. For us, that corresponds to a page as follows:

• BLEED: 10.3125” x 15.75” (6188 x 9450 pixels @ 600 dpi)
• TRIM: 9.9375” x 15.375 (5963 x 9225 pixels @ 600 dpi)
• SAFE: 9.1875” x 14.625” (5513 x 8775 pixels @ 600 dpi)

Our “Final Page Format” that will be sent to our printer for offset printing of the comic is as follows:

• Bleed:  6.875” x 10.5”  (2063 x 3150 pixels @ 300 dpi)
• Trim:  6.625” x 10.25”  (1988 x 3075 pixels @ 300 dpi)
• Safe:  6.125” x 9.75”  (1838 x 2925 pixels @ 300 dpi)

FILE FORMATS – Our artists typically are working in Photoshop so all artwork is in Photoshop’s PSD file format typically. As an alternative, files can be saved and uploaded as TIFF files with NO file compression.

LAYERS – The artists should be consistent with your policies concerning layered art. Ours are as follows:

• Pencil/Inked pages will have their layers flattened prior to submission.
• Colored pages may have their layers flattened prior to submission at the discretion of the colorist.
• Lettered pages will have all lettering in a single layer separate from the art to aid in changes, corrections and the translation of the comic into other languages.
• Cover art that is submitted should always include the various graphics (art, credits, titles, etc.) in separate layers. During the production process changes and corrections are much easier if the separate layers are intact.

COLOR CALIBRATION – We urge the use of a color calibrated monitor as we here at Kymera Press use color calibrated monitors and printers when reviewing submitted art.

COLOR MODE – Our artists work in either RGB or CMYK mode but we require all art to be submitted in CMYK. We recommended that the Gamut Warning tool be used in Photoshop prior to submitting the CMYK files for review. We use the tool and art that has out-of-gamut colors is returned to the artist to have the color corrected.

COLOR SETTINGS – We provide our artists with a color settings file (.csf) to be used with Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) when creating art for Kymera Press. The color settings file is based on the color settings advocated by Hi-Fi Colour Design in their book Hi-Fi Colour for Comics.

ASSEMBLY – So the creative team is done and now some assembly is required. Besides the twenty two or so pages of your comic, you’ve got a front cover, a back cover, a credits page and whatever pages you need to fill your comic book. The total number of pages must be a multiple of four as commercial printers assemble a comic book out of sheets that have two pages printed on one side and two pages printed on the other.

INSPECTION – The first step in the assembly process is to open each and every page and verify that it meets your specifications. If a page does not, either make the adjustments yourself or return the art to the creative team and let them decide how best to fix the issue.

DOCUMENT SETUP – Open Adobe InDesign and create and save a new document. Our setup is as follows:

Intent: Print
Number of Pages: 32
Start Page #: 1
Page Size: Custom
Width: 6.625 in
Height: 10.25 in
Orientation: Portrait
Margins: 0.5 in (Top/Bottom/Left/Right)
Bleed: 0.125 in (Top/Bottom/Left/Right)
Slug: 0.75 in (Top/Bottom/Left/Right)

DOCUMENT BUILD – At this point I have all of the art that’s going to go into the book in a single folder on our Dropbox site. All of the artwork at this point is in the TIFF format (no compression/no layers) and in the CMYK color space required by commercial printers. The content of this folder is a copy of all of the art that has passed the inspection process. I do not work with the original artwork as it might be altered in later printings and I want to be able to archive exactly what is going into this printing.

Open the folder containing your art and drag and drop the issue’s cover from the folder to the first page of the InDesign document. It should completely cover the white page and extend out to precisely fit the red lines that indicate the document’s bleed edge. If not, then there is a mismatch between the cover’s size and your documents settings. Go back and inspect your artwork and your specifications and adjust your InDesign document and/or artwork until there’s a perfect fit.

Repeat this step with each and every finished page that’s been created for your comic book. Save your work along the way and pat yourself on the back when you’re done. You’re close to having a finished book.

Next week we’ll  have the final installment of our series, How Many Artists does it take to Make a Comic Book, with part three of A Glimpse Inside the Comic Book Production Office.  Don’t miss it.