The Nitty Gritty of Printing…since you asked.

Red Sun Press is a commercial print shop, meaning that we provide a wide range of print services to consumers and businesses. In our shop we handle everything from quick turn-around flyers and postcards to your annual reports, full-length books, and specialty products like custom display banners and die-cut presentation folders. If you’re looking for direct mail or bindery services we offer complete solutions for both.

The process of putting content on paper is the essence of printing. Once the intent, specifications, and timeline have been identified, we’ll produce results for you using:

1. A sheetfed offset press like our 4-color Komori Spica, offset. Sheet width is 29″. With this we can do large quantities of everything from posters to books.
2. A digital press such as our Konica-Minolta C2070, using toner in color or black and white. Quick production and beautiful color.
3. A large-format inkjet for posters or banners up to 96″
4. A combination of any of the above.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of the products and services at Red Sun Press, here’s a good start:

Inks: CMYK, Pantone, and Toner

Ink, along with paper, is the hallmark of the printing process, although toner-based printing is common for short-run work. The basics come down to full-color (CMYK) vs. single or spot colors. Get a little deeper into ink here. Digital printing mainly uses toner, not ink, and can yield very vivid and instant prints.

In process color printing (CMYK), the colors are created by printing a combination of dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. The combination of dots of these four colors creates an optical illusion of thousands of different colors. Process printing is used when printing photos, full color illustrations, and other cases where a wide range of colors needs to be included on the finished piece. 

In spot color printing the colors are specified using a swatch book. Spot colors might be specified when a particular value and hue are critical, or when a certain design effect is called for. Sometimes using spot inks can be more economical than full-color printing. Red Sun uses the Pantone Matching System (PMS). The swatch books representing Solid Coated and Solid Uncoated colors make picking a spot color easy. By the way, the “‘coated” and “uncoated” colors are actually the exact same ink, they just look different when printed on coated or uncoated paper.

Other Pantone guides can be used to specify process color mixes, metallic ink colors, fluorescent colors, and other specialty mixes. You can specify up to 4 spot colors in any given job, but these cannot be combined with process, or “full-color” printing. Spot colors can sometimes be approximated with full-color printing, but most of the inks have very distinctive pigments.

Note: PMS colors should be always evaluated and specified using printed swatch books like those from Pantone. The color shown on computer monitors or in most printer output are only approximations, and are almost never accurate for exact spot ink color.

To top off your job with the most durable finish, ask for a matte, glossy, or satin varnish. This thin coating will protect the paper and ink so the piece can be folded or handled more aggressively.

Red Sun Press uses vegetable-based ink for all its printing. Using vegetable-based inks is an alternative to the less environmentally-friendly petroleum-based inks. The difference in the printed result is indistinguishable. The inks used at Red Sun have low VOC, or volatile organic compounds, making them easy on the nose and lungs of those working in the pressroom. For more on Red Sun’s environmental practices, see this.

Digital Printing

Any job requiring quick turnaround or variable data will likely be printed on one of our digital print production machines. These can run up to 70 pages per minute and staple, fold or bind all inline within the printer. Maximum sheet size is 13 x19 inches.
In digital printing, the toners utilize a 4-color system like the CMYK model. These products might have a shinier look on the sheet because they are heat-set, but otherwise provide a good alternative to offset processes, especially for short print runs.

Paper Choices for Printing

Paper choices are head-spinningly vast. Our most common stock is made up of post-consumer recycled content, but any of thousands of textures, weights and colors are available – anything from 20# text to 20 point coated cover stock. Inkjet products usually require a specialized coated paper for optimal results, so choices are more limited there. Consult your customer service rep. who can show you samples or the swatch books from the mill. We take good care about paper choices and environmental impacts of each job.

Proof twice, print once

Proofing is an important step. Before your job gets to the printing press, you are provided with a proof of the whole thing showing how it will appear when it is finished. You should check this proof carefully to make sure all your content is correct. Any inaccuracies you see here could end up on your finished job unless you identify them and indicate corrections, or provide a corrected file for output.

For color-critical jobs, you will want an Epson proof or a digital print sample that reliably shows colors as they will reproduce on press. For other jobs, a PDF proof will be provided. Once the proof is approved by you, we get going with the completion of the job.

A word about PDF proofing

We strongly recommend that you not try to evaluate color fidelity from what you see on your screen or office printer. The color in the PDF proof is accurate for general purposes; but in order to faithfully see color and tonality as it will appear in the final printed output requires special settings and calibration of your equipment. This is not really practical for most users, so instead request a hard proof and/or a color sample swatch if you are especially concerned about color.

When you review your proof, whether PDF or hard-proof, you have a chance to indicate any changes or corrections before we move ahead. You can make comments in Acrobat if it’s a PDF, or mark up the paper proof and show the changes that way. Or you can just write up the changes in an email, explaining clearly what should be changed.

If absolutely necessary, you can submit new files after you have reviewed the proof. In that case we begin the proofing process again.

Even more resources…

Preparing and submitting your document for printing can be as easy as hitting Export to PDF. But for more detailed information see our guide to file formats and other specifications. Most important, though, if you have a question about how to prepare your job, or how it will be produced, call or contact us. We’re here to help get your job completed in the most effective way possible.

Bindery services include trimming, folding, saddlestitching, perfect binding, die-cutting and various other techniques for finishing your piece. Get an idea of what’s possible with bindery services here.

Fulfillment and Direct Mail Campaigns Red Sun Press can handle your mailing and fulfillment needs through our partnership with Liberty Mail, a local SOMWBA (State Office of Minority and Women Business Assistance) certified woman-owned business. For more on how to put together your mailing, see our breakdown on personalized and automated mailings.