- [Voiceover] Alright, so as I was saying in the intro,
it's easy to think of printing from Illustrator or
any other application for that matter,
as primarily being a function of going up to the file menu
and choosing the print command
and we'll be addressing that command
in all kinds of detail in future movies.
But we're going to start by taking a look at a couple of
upfront considerations that are every bit as important
as that command, starting with paper color.
So 99.99 percent of the time you're going to be
printing to white paper.
And that's because white is theoretically the brightest
color there is and that way you're going to be adding
inks to that paper in order to darken the paper color
and by virtue of the fact that you're starting with white
you're going to get the brightest inks possible.
But let's say for whatever reason you want to print
to a colored paper.
How do you preview that in Illustrator?
Well the first thing you want to do is make sure
your black arrow tool is selected up here at the top
of the tool box.
Then, click on the document set up button up here
in the control panel to bring up the document
set up dialog box.
You notice that the second half of this dialog box
is devoted to these transparency and overprint options.
And their first and foremost job is to allow you
to preview the transparent portions of your artwork.
And so let's say I go ahead and change the grid colors
from light to medium
and that gives me this checkerboard pattern right here
with these light and dark shades of gray.
At which point I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to accept that change.
And then I'll go up to the view menu
and choose this command right here,
show transparency grid,
which is going to replace everything that's transparent
inside of my artwork with that checkerboard pattern.
And this is just preview by the way.
Just so you know what's going on inside of your artwork.
Notice if I were to go to the file menu and choose the
print command then I would see the artwork previewed here
against a white paper background.
So in other words, you're not really going to be printing
this transparency grid.
It's just there to show you what's going on.
Alright, I'm going to cancel out.
Now you might wonder why in the world
I'm introducing the transparency grid in the first place
when that really doesn't have anything to do
with colored paper but in fact, it does.
And so to show you what I mean,
I'll return to the view menu
and choose high transparency grid
to make that thing go away
and then I'll once again click
on the document set up button.
Alright, now notice this check box right here,
simulate colored paper.
That's going to show you what the artwork looks like
when it's printed to colored paper.
But it's up to you to dial in that color
and you do so by clicking on this first color swatch,
not the second one,
but the first one right there.
Go ahead and click on it in order to bring up
a dialog box that's going to differ
depending on your platform.
So right now we're seeing the Windows version
of the color dialog box.
The Macintosh version looks different
and it gives you different values as well.
So you're going to have to play around with these values
to get whatever results you're looking for.
But let's say I'm going to print to a kind of sepia paper.
Then I dial in a hue value of 33 and I'll dial in
a saturation value of 44, let's say.
And then I'll go ahead and crank the lum value,
the luminosity value, that is,
up to 200 and then I'll click OK
in order to accept that color.
So it's a very light shade of beige as you can see.
After which point I'll click OK
in order to accept that change.
Now we've got a little bit of a bug here inside
this version of Illustrator.
At any rate, you can see now that
all of the layer thumbnails are set against this beige
background, but we're not actually previewing
the effect here inside the document window.
In order to update things, you just need to zoom out
and then zoom back in like so.
Now this problem with this preview
is that it's not accurate.
What we're seeing is the inks at their absolute brightest
even though they're going to absorb into a colored paper.
To see what the inks are really going to look like
what you have to do is go up to the view menu
once again and then choose this command right there
overprint preview.
What that's going to do is show you how the inks look
when they're printed on top of a colored background.
So as soon as you choose that command notice
that the inks darkened.
And that's because we're now mixing those inks
with the paper color.
The thing is, however, this is totally a preview.
Nothing but a preview.
We're not going to actually print this color of beige.
The assumption is that you're going to load beige paper
in this case into your printer.
And so if I were to go to the file menu
and choose the print command,
I am seeing the image against a white paper background
and that's because that's the way things always work
inside the print dialog box.
So just bear in mind
that this is nothing more than a preview.
Also, bear in mind, any time you're working with
colored paper, the color of that paper is going to
influence the color of your artwork.
And that's because the inks end up mixing with the paper
color and notice the one thing that we do not have
is white inside of this artwork.
And that's because unless you're printing with
white ink, which is very rare,
you're never going to brighten up the paper color.
The paper color, generally speaking, is always going to
darken your artwork.
Alright, so that's how you preview colored paper
inside of Illustrator.
Bear in mind that this is an attribute that
will be saved along with your document.
It is only a preview attribute, once again.
And for what it's worth,
if I were to make a recommendation to you,
it would be that whenever possible,
print to white paper.
Because that's going to give you the best
and brightest inks.