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How do I create a legal inkjet knockout box? Page
C-99 of the USPS Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) lists some of the requirements
to maintain an automated multiline optical character read (MLOCR) discount.
Simply put, the postal service computers need to read the address that
is printed in the address box, and if there are other dots present, it
may reject every copy of the magazine. We obviously don’t want that
to happen to anyone! Option 1: The Safest Bet To avoid any possibility of mail being rejected, many publishers are opting to make their knockout boxes 100% white. This can be done in Quark or InDesign with a regular picture box. Option 2: A Light Tint Instead of a "glaring" white box, another option is to define a color in Quark or PageMaker that is 3% cyan, 3% magenta and 3% yellow (note: no black!). Combined, these colors will make a light background tint that will not interfere with the postal equipment. Option 3: The Hard Way, in 10 Easy Steps So, what if you really want a ghosted image of your cover? That's still possible, but it takes a little manipulation in Photoshop. What follows is one way to get the desired result. In summary, we're going to select an area for our inkjet box, find out what the darkest point is (because we don’t want the box to have more than 10% total ink coverage), create a layer that contains all white and adjust the opacity of that layer until we get the ink coverage low enough, flatten the image (remove the white layer) and, finally, delete all the black ink from our selected area. Make sense? Let's go! Step 1: Make a selection that is 1-1/2 x 4" The first step will take a little work. Take your time, since it won't be easy making changes to it later. You may want to place your cover graphic in your file to get an idea where you want your inkjet box to go. See the information above regarding position. Using your Rectangular Marquee tool, draw a box that is 1-1/2 x 4". You'll be able to see the size of your selection in the Info window as long as it is set to display values in inches (click on the little triangle in the window's upper-right corner to change the specifications). Hold down the spacebar while you are drawing your box to move your selection without changing its size. If you're using Photoshop 6.0 or later, you may select “fixed size” under “style” at the very top of the screen to manually select a width of 4" and height of 1.5". Step 2: Go to “Threshold” to find the darkest point Now we're going to find out which area of our selection has the most ink coverage. Go to Image > Adjust > Threshold. If you grab the bottom arrowhead and slide it to the left, you'll notice that a big black area will appear in your selection and get progressively smaller as you move left. The dots that are still visible when the arrow is way to the left are the darkest ones—we're going to want to watch that area very carefully. Make a mental note of where that place is, and then click Cancel. Step 3: Pick the color sampler tool Select your Color Sampler tool from the toolbar, and click once in the area you noted in Step 2. A target will appear on your screen, which will also be tracked in the Info window you used in Step 1. Step 4: Create a new layer Now, we're going to create a new layer of white to fade out the contents of our inkjet box selection. Go to Layer > New > Layer, call it “White," and click OK. If you have your Layers window open on your screen, you'll notice that the layer “White” will appear above another layer named “Background”; “White” will be selected. This is exactly what we want. Step 5: Fill that layer with white Go to Edit > Fill, and choose white as your fill color. Step 6: Adjust the opacity of the white layer Go to the Layers window and adjust the opacity down until the combined percentage of C+M+Y (don't add black!) is less than 10%. Opacity is adjusted by clicking on the black triangle on the right and moving the slider to the left. You should see some image reappear on your screen. Step 7: Flatten the image Okay... now that we've ghosted back our image enough (or reduced the influence of the white layer enough), we want to get rid of the separate white layer. Just go to Layer > Flatten Image, or click on the triangle in the Layers window and scroll down to Flatten Image. Step 8: Select the black channel The next step is to get rid of all of the black dots in the selected area. Do this by opening your Channels window (Window > Show Channels) and clicking on “Black." Your screen will quickly turn to black and white, indicating all of the black of the image you're working on. Step 9: Fill the black channel with white Remember Step 5? Go to Edit > Fill and choose white again. It will affect only the area we've selected, and because we are working only in the black channel, it will remove only the black dots. Step 10: Verify the percentages We're just about done! Click on “CMYK” under Channels to bring all the colors back. With the Eyedropper tool, you should be able to look at the ink percentages in the Info window to verify that there is no black, and the combined percentage of C+M+Y is less than 10. Save your file as a CMYK TIFF file, and you're ready to place your graphic in your Quark or PageMaker file.
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