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Depending on the produced files, it can sometimes be complicated to achieve the desired print result with the risograph. This chapter provides information on good and bad properties of print files for print-ing colour separations. A checklist for quickly reviewing the files needed to print the final risographic artwork can be found on the inside back cover of this publication.
Creating the print template is done from a file, for simplicity’s sake a separate page is required for each colour (2 D: Separations, page 53). Basically, almost any file type can be used to create a template for the risograph, since the risograph can be utilised like a standard colour printer, provided an operating system with a valid driver is used. Quite a few users work directly from InDesign by using the Print dialogue or sending uncompressed image data from Photoshop. The possibility of compression, however, makes the PDF file stand out as probably the best solution for printing files—PDFs provide many advantages, such as the compression feature offered by InDesign. PDFs are container files that neither require links to fully function, nor do embedded fonts have to be specially submitted for printing. For the creation of the PDF file, it is advisable to create projects in spot colours (e.g. Pantone) right from the start to avoid accidental colour mixing in CMYK, which leads to undesired results in the separation (e.g. an image in the colour space CMYK would be divided onto two pages and separated into cyan and yellow). If colours are to be mixed, the relevant levels must be set to Multiply, otherwise the underlying layers of colour will be omitted in the PDF output.
