File formats:
- For litho printing, files need to be supplied a press ready PDF, CMYK, Acrobat 1.3 compatible with 3mm bleed and crop marks, all fonts to be embedded/converted to curves.
- For digital printing, we prefer press ready PDF, but can work from most source documents.
- An important note to remember when preparing files for digital print is always to process your PDF’s with the correct bleed, flattened transparencies and converted to CMYK.
Things to avoid for digital print:
- Avoid using thin lines or borders.
- Avoid large blocks of colour as banding may occur. Reproduction can be improved by adding texture or “noise” to large areas of solid colour if you absolutely can’t avoid using solid colour in the design.
- Avoid very thin fonts.
- Avoid using half tones of colours.
- Avoid running images or colour blocks over fold areas.
Book work:
When putting together artwork for a booklet/book, always work in multiples of 4 pages. (4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32 etc). If your content makes up a number of which is not a multiple of 4, for example only 26 pages, you will need to add 2 pages (can be blank or “notes” pages) to make up the difference to get to 28 pages. Supply your print ready PDF as single pages and we will do the imposition for you.
Images:
Always use high resolution images – 300dpi. Images saved off the internet or sent via SmartPhone applications like What’s App and even email may be compressed to smallest file size which is not suitable for printing. Always use the original file at its full size.
Packing instructions:
We can provide collation of documents or pre packing where necessary – but this needs to be specified upfront when ordering/ getting a quotation.