Magazine Printing

Hello,

I am prepping for an upcoming interview for a design position at a magazine. While I am versed in Photoshop, I don't know much about preparing images for magazine printing. What color profile should I convert images to before sending them off to print? Is there anything else about editing images in Photoshop for magazine printing that I should know? Can anyone recommend specific topics that I should research or helpful resources?

Thanks!

The best thing is to just ask them, if they want (CMYK is the colour mode that is used by most commercial printers) CMYK or RGB.

I think he wants to impress the interviewer with his knowledge and secure a position rather than actually take anything to print ;)

Are you applying for a design position on a magazine and the position requires only Photoshop knowledge? :confused:

The magazine will have it's own ways of doing things, they will have their own specification for photos/images. All to do with their presses and the paper the magazine is printed on.

I've worked on several different newspapers and magazines and also in an agency supplying hundreds of media; I needed to juggle lots of profiles and PDF output settings and proofing systems. So it's hard to answer your question, the company won't be looking for specific knowledge of their method of getting stuff press-ready. So all you can do is know how to adapt and show them that and know in general about supplying work for print. In which case these two places have quite good general guides for supplying artwork to print;

RCS; http://www.rcs.plc.uk/info/index.asp
and
Printing Dot Com; http://www.printing.com/knowhow

Also for an example one particular company; The Daily Telegraph newspaper and glossy magazine printing/press specs;
http://advertising.telegraph.co.uk/static/tech.aspx

Read it all, good luck with the job!