What am I looking at? As you click on the "Play" button, you can see two jobs with identical designs being printed, with and without trapping. Notice in the untrapped version, slight shifts in registration caused white "leaks" to appear around the edges, and the result is inconsistent from sheet to sheet. In the trapped version, however, the same shifts are being compensated by traps created in the film. This minimized the effects of mis-registration on press.
What is trapping?

Trapping refers to the overlaps that are necessary between color elements to compensate for the inaccuracies during a press run. These "overlaps" are necessary because of potential registration problems due to paper shrinkage, humidity, condition of the printing press, among other factors.
How are "traps" created? Trapping can be done either manually or electronically, depending on the complexity of the artwork and the operator's experience with color printing. Common manual trapping techniques include setting certain inks/elements to overprint. Sunrise offers both manual trapping and automated electronic solutions.
How much trapping is necessary? The industry standard is 4/1000 of an inch, or approximately 0.25pt for offset printing, and up to 2pts for silk screen printing. The exact amount will vary depending on the printer's equipment and preference.
What should I watch for?

Trapping of metallic colors is different than standard process or PMS colors. Since most metallic are opaque, ink sequence is very important for determining the proper traps.

Quark's default trapping may cause certain letters to "fatten up". This happens most frequently when the text box is unnecessarily large.

Should I attempt to trap files myself or give it to Sunrise? Due to cost and other reasons, many clients like to trap files themselves. We actually encourage this, but only if you have the proper experience and knowledge to trap files properly. Trapping errors are very difficult to detect before the film is output and a proof is made, so any mistakes will quickly become costly and almost always cause delays in the project. By using some of the most advanced trapping solutions on the market, we know what to trap, where to trap, when to trap, and how to trap.