Ive designed a 4 page a4 brochure with diecut in indesign using tiff and psd images made in photoshop. everything is done in cmyk begining thru to end. the brochure looks perfect on screen - when printed on a laser printer prints perfect - but when is gone to offset comes out terrible. the maroon changes to a redish yellow and the blue changes to a navy. they tried to print it a number of times but with the same results. once again ill stress everything is done in cmyk. i gave it to the printers in acrobat format using several different settings and finally in indesign format but to no avail. i am using a pc while the printers have a mac - could this be an issue. and if it is arn't pdf's, tiffs and psd's cross compatible???

Oh dear. Not a good story. You've supplied in pdf and ensured that everything is in CMYK format, not RGB (a common problem experienced). Don't forget that litho printing ink is very different to digital/laser printing toners. Litho ink sinks into the paper whereas laser toner sits on the top. The pigmentation is obviously different too. Using your cmyk, have you checked your colours against a Pantone swatch? Your litho print will never exactly match your laser print although you would hope to achieve a finished result that is at least in the same ballpark. Are you printing onto white paper? MAC v PC shouldn't be an issue - only that the PC monitors won't view colours as accurately as MAC.

www.ellisonprinting.co.uk

Conversion of the file is important. To make sure the conversion is properly

The file conversion and arranging plates is the perceived trouble in the offset printing