The New York Times - Advertising - Color Production Guidelines

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Production Guidelines for Color Newspaper Ads

Overview | Production Guidelines | ICC Profile | Distiller Settings | Submission Checklist

Please note that The New York Times does not accept "spot color": premixed or specialty inks such as PMS colors, neons and metallics.

Tone Reproduction

The relationship between tones in an original (color transparencies, photographic prints, color and electronic artwork, line art) and tones in the printed work is known as tone reproduction and is often called contrast. Because of tone compression, newsprint reproduction has significantly less contrast than the original or magazine publications (SWOP). While color printing in The New York Times newspaper is among the best available, it differs in quality from publications printed on coated paper.

Tone Density

The darkest four-color area should not exceed 240%. For black only areas larger than one square inch, the dot percentage should not exceed 90%.

Mechanical Dot Gain

Not all dots grow at the same degree. The greatest growth is in the midtone. This becomes significant owing to the high absorption characteristics of newsprint and the speed (copies/hour) of the non-heatset offset presses.

Optical dot gain is caused in part by the relative darkness of the newsprint itself: the brightness (or whiteness) of the paper. You cannot eliminate optical nor mechanical dot gain. You must compensate for this effect in your images and flat tints. Without the required change, your color ad will print heavy and muddy looking. Mechanical dot gain for The New York Times is approximately 28%.

Gray Balance

The first consideration of color reproduction on newsprint is determining the combination of cyan, magenta and yellow inks that will reproduce an original neutral gray image as the same gray upon printing. Color impurities of inks, lower ink densities, and the lower brightness factor of newsprint all affect gray balance.

Type

When preparing your ad, please keep in mind that we can be up to two rows of dots out of register and still be within industry specifications.

Thus, for any dropout (reverse) type or four-color black type at least 14pt. medium to bold sans-serif typeface is recommended. Dropout (reverse) type in a black only area should be at least 10pt. medium to bold sans-serif typeface. All color rules should be at least 2pts, all B/W rules a minimum of 1pt.

Please note that type in artwork or in a transparency is not set type but a scanned four-color black that is screened at 100L; therefore, it is subject to the limitations previously mentioned for quality and registration.

Fonts

Please provide Type 1 screen and printer fonts for color ads sent using removable disks. (This does not apply to PDF files).

Note: We cannot make font corrections or modifications to PDF or postscript files. TrueType fonts are not accepted.

Graphics

Resolution and Line Screen:

Images @ 203.2 dpi (8 pixels/mm)
Line Art @ 1016 ppi (40 pixels/mm)
Output screen ruling @ 100 lPI

Accepted File Formats: