In addition to a new website design, I’ve now created a preview page so you can access all of the previews from one location.
I can also reveal that I will be launching a new visual design for Sub Rosa. This new design will be showcased in a special freebie that will be released soon.
Click on the image to see a larger version of the cover of the freebie, Crown of the Garamantian Sorceror-Kings.
This freebie contains an Ancient Magic-style vignette, with details of a lost desert kingdom and the artifacts that helped this magical realm thrive for thousands of years.
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Recent Comments
(*) "all ink-jets" is somewhat subject to the prov...
@Neil: I've changed the numbers on the map so that...
As the question was asked... I usually use an i...
(*) "all ink-jets" is somewhat subject to the prov...
I used a laser printer in this case, as laser tone...
New visual style? Interesting. Can I ask, does that include colour?
For that matter, what are the difficulties in making a magazine like Sub Rosa in colour? I’d imagine it’s just more work all around but given that I wouldn’t know where to start I don’t really know how much more difficult it makes things.
Hi Mark,
It will not include a great deal of colour. This decision is largely due to making production of the zine faster and easier. Colour works would require a great deal more time and effort which is just not available at this stage.
Cheers
Alex
I should also say that the new style, while different from the earlier one, is still similar in theme…
Thanks Alex. I assumed it was a case of everything just taking a little longer.
Looking forward to seeing the new (though similar) theme. Do you have any tentative dates yet?
Love the preview, love the new style … but…
Can I make a plea, on behalf of all those who print the files to read, to have WHITE (*) background for the most part, not pale-grey? The spatter marks are fine – it’s the grey shading that’s a problem…
(*absolute white, as in “no ink printed at all”)
The thing is, complete coverage with pale grey means:
* it prints badly (laser/ink-jet printers don’t do uniform pale tones well – they have to dither (stipple) to dilute the ink – and it shows.)
* it makes the text harder to read, ‘cos words are surrounded by scattered little grey dots (or on inkjet printers, separate spatters of cyan, magenta and yellow coloured dots)
* it doesn’t cover the pages fully anyway, as almost all printers have a non-printing margin, which is left paper-white, so the contents looks … dirty, like the paper is not clean.
Oh, and while the red-numbers on the map (p.13) are in principle a nice leavening, they don’t print clearly.
You admit colour is a faff – well sadly (for those with monochrome laser printers), one needs to check the appearance of the image both in colour and forced into greyscale. Colour is fine as an extra if the brightness variations make the image still clear, but unfortunately for this page, the mid-grey printed for mid-red lacks contrast with the surrounding map elements: specifically map numbers 4,5,6,7 are practically invisible (1-3, 8-12 stand out fine)
Good points Neil. I’ll increase the contrast of the page backgrounds for Issue 6, so it’s whiter.
I always use a laser printer to print things out. Do many other people use an inkjet printer?
@Mark: A tentative date is “close to Xmas”. Perhaps sooner, perhaps later…
Cheers
Alex
I used a laser printer in this case, as laser toner doesn’t run/smudge when wet (inkjet ink can smudge even from sweaty palms) – hence the monochrome-print problem with the p.13 map.
Whether printed on colour-inkjet(*), mono-laser, or colour-laser (unconfirmed but predicted), all(*) prints have a problem that the droplets/toner particles have a fixed irreducible colour/darkness, and the only way to grade below that is to space out the points of toner with blank between … so you either get a grid of stipple dots, or a random spatter. (Inkjets seem to prefer random spatter; most laser printers I’ve met prefer grid patterns).
When I prepare scans of Angela’s drawings for HP/SR/… I always try to threshold the lightest areas and clip them to pure white, specifically to avoid this.
I can see where the grey comes from – on-screen the pages look like aged parchment, white spots and spatters. Looks very nice. Just doesn’t agree with printers…
(*) “all ink-jets” is somewhat subject to the proviso that it means traditional CMY or CMKY 3- or 4-colour inkjets.
Newer photo printers add “light cyan” and “light magenta” inks 9and sometimes “light yellow” too, specifically to address and improve this problem when printing photos at Best quality. Of course that uses yet more more-expensive-than-vintage-champagne liquid ink…
As the question was asked…
I usually use an inkjet printer but I don’t like buying ink. So if a pure white background will save me money, I’d go for that. I think the faux-foxing would still work and give it a nice parchmenty appearance.
@Neil: I’ve changed the numbers on the map so that they are white, so hopefully they’re readable when printed out black/white.
Cheers
Alex
(*) “all ink-jets” is somewhat subject to the proviso that it means traditional CMY or CMKY 3- or 4-colour inkjets.
Newer photo printers add “light cyan” and “light magenta” inks 9and sometimes “light yellow” too, specifically to address and improve this problem when printing photos at Best quality. Of course that uses yet more more-expensive-than-vintage-champagne liquid ink…