Tower Christian School Yearbook Site (for the 2010-2011 Yearbook)
Work in Black and White
The second most critical issue in the digital options concerns the difference between looking at your page on your computer screen (or even printed on your color printer) versus what that same page looks like printed on a high volume black and white printer. This is something that historically has tripped up even the most computer savvy families. That absolutely fabulous color picture that you chose looks great in color on the screen. But when it prints on the high volume black and white printer, all those pastel colors wash together and you can no longer even distinguish people’s faces. As with the half inch margin issue, in the past we had someone that spent the time doing everything that he could to fix these issues (last year 50 hours were spent working on just 20 pages). This year, exactly what you submit is what the corporate vendor will be printing. Your best option is to make that conversion yourself.
The computer gives you a number of options for seeing what your finished product will look like printed out. Nearly all word processors and printer drivers offer the option to “print” in black and white. If you do not already have a PDF printer driver (that produces PDF output files instead of printing a paper copy) there are several free options available on the internet. There are also free services on the internet that will convert a submitted word processing document into a PDF file. You will definitely want to do that conversion to black and white yourself, because you are guaranteed to spend more time working to get it to look to your satisfaction than the printer will.