So I've had the very good fortune to end up with a lovely set of colour pictures for my game, Six Bullets for Vengeance. I was planning on printing in black and white, but these pictures just beg to be printed in their full glory. But, I know nothing about colour printing. Help!
Are there pod printers who do colour?
Does lulu?
What sort of things do I need to ask/check?
How much of a price hike do you think I'll be looking at?
Colour plates? Full colour interior? What difference does it make?
And is it worth it?
Plates v Full Colour
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Thu, 21/12/2006 - 14:42.
Most short-run printers will do colour, but it usually involves a substantial price hike, especially if you are going for full colour throughout. I would be leaning towards having colour plates rather than full colour, unless there is a particular aesthetic that you are aiming for by going full colour.
RapidPOD have recently changed their costing setup, but here's their prices, including colour pages. So, you can see that each colour pages costs about 10 - 15c (about 6 to 8 pence in real money).
I can't speak for Lulu, as I've never used them, hopefully someone else will be able to pitch in with information.
Hope this helps.
Contested Ground Studios
Lulu's colour printing of
Submitted by Matt on Thu, 21/12/2006 - 14:59.
Lulu's colour printing of interiors is pretty expensive (ex. 80 pages square book over £9), and with no option for plates.
The paperbacks FAQ will give you an ideas.
-Matt
Realms Publishing
Thinking Carefully
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Fri, 22/12/2006 - 11:23.
Lulu certainly seems like a very expensive option regarding colour. In fact, they seem quite expensive all round compared to other printers.
regardless, I think what you really want to think about is what you want to achieve by spending the extra on colour:
Increased perceived value?
Doing justice to the artwork?
Other aesthetic reasons?
Think about why you want to do it and decide if that fits in with your budget for producing the game. If you have a very strong gut feeling that the art should be in colour and it's not going to break the bank, then I'd say go with it.
What format are you intending the book to be anyway and how many do you envisage printing in the first run?
Cheers
Malcolm
Contested Ground Studios
Lulu does seem very
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Sun, 24/12/2006 - 14:21.
Lulu does seem very expensive, especially when I can get a similar service from my POD printer for a fraction of the price. But I digress ...
I think I'd have to see how the art looks in greyscale to see how different it looks. Keith's art is very distinctive so I suspect it would look good in b&w anyway.
I'm going to release it as a pdf first (so colour is a no brainer there) then release it as softcover shortly after.
My first print run will be a mere 50, and I'll probably just release via IPR to start with.
Avalon Color
Submitted by AvalonTeam on Sun, 25/02/2007 - 00:47.
We've just release our new pricing and have lowered the price of our color pages down to $0.15 per page.
We handle you color pages in your book one of three ways:
Option 1: The first option is that all of your color pages are together in one section within the book. It does not mater how many color pages there are, it just maters if they are all together. For this option, you pay the color rate for the color pages and the B&W rate listed above for the rest.
Option 2: The second option is if you have more than one section of color page within your book. For option you will incur a insertion fee for each color section beyond the first section. THe page are bill as in Option 1.
Option 3: The third option is if you have a high number of color page. For example, if you have 1 color page then 1 B&W page and so on. For this type of book, it just becomes too difficult to try separating the pages. In this case, we may have to charge you the color rate for all of the pages. The other issue that we commonly find is that the B&W pages are not truly B&W, at least the printer does not see it as B&W. For example, if you use a process black and a true black on the page, they both look black, but the RIP on the printer will see it as color because of the process. We do have pre-flight software that convert a page to a true black, but that would incur a pre-press fee.
I have not seen a lot of books that are going through distribution with a ton of color pages in them. Jayne's Intelligence Report has every other page in color and looks great, but I think they mostly sell it directly. The rest of the books have just a few pages in color.
Something that we did for a client that wanted a color border on every page was to have the pages printed offset, then we had the text and such printed digital later. Still drive the cost up, but not as much as having every page done in color on the digital machine.
Take care,
Lance Williams
Avalon Innovations
POD & Short Run Digital Services
For the Gaming Industry
www.AvalonTeam.com