ARTWORK YOUR KEEP-ME GUIDE TO SUPPLYING YOUR ARTWORK FOR THE BEST POSSIBLE PRINT

Transcription

1 ARTWORK YOUR KEEP-ME GUIDE TO SUPPLYING YOUR ARTWORK FOR THE BEST POSSIBLE PRINT

2 AT-A-GLANCE Hold on there tiger! Before sending us your artwork, have you? Checked the paper size is right? Set your colours to CMYK? Made sure your images are 300dpi? Added a 3mm bleed and crop marks? Embedded your fonts? Read on for more detail... Saved your artwork as a PDF? Proofread your document?

3 PAPER SIZES When you set up your artwork files, make sure you use the right dimensions for the paper size you want to print, and have a think about the type and weight of your paper too. Texture, coatings, lamination and paper colour will all have an impact on your final print. A5 A6 A3 A4 A1 841mm x 594mm A2 594mm x 420mm A3 297mm x 420mm A1 BUSINESS CARDS 85mm x 55mm A2 A4 210mm x 297mm A mm x 210mm A6 105mm x 148.5mm Please add 3mm of bleed to each edge if you need the printing to go right to the edge of the paper. Because toner/inks are transparent, the type and colour of the paper you chose for your job may affect the final printed colour of the job itself. So, if your job is printed on an off-white paper for example, your colours could look slightly darker than you expected. They might also look different if you print them on coated and uncoated paper. So, if you ask us to print full-colour letterheads on 120gsm bond (uncoated) and full-colour business cards on 400gsm silk (coated), any common colours may appear different on the final print. Gloss and matt lamination will have a noticeable effect on your printed colours, so please bear this in mind when you re designing. Ask us if you re not sure what the effect will be. We re always happy to help.

4 CMYK CMYK is a colour setup that stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Key stands for black). It is important that your artwork is set to CMYK so that it matches our printing machines, as their inks are made up of these four colours. This will make the best possible colour match. If your job is full colour, please ensure that you work entirely in CMYK. Do not use RGB, Pantone or colours which are specific to the program you are using. Similarly, if your job is spot colour, only use those spot colours. You cannot rely on screen representation of colours instead refer to printed CMYK or Pantone sheets for colour selection (we have these available at our office). There is no need for you to apply any colour profiles to images as these will almost certainly not match those required for our presses. If your program does not support CMYK or Pantone, we can often convert your colours before printing. Please discuss this with us when ordering (and see File Checking below). When selecting a programme to create your artwork do note that some programs (e.g. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint) do not support CMYK or professional Spot Colour choices and this will affect the final output. If you are concerned about specific colour matching for a house colour company logo, for example, please discuss this with us. C M Y K

5 HI-RES Unlike on-screen applications, your images for printing need to be much larger and higher resolution. All this means is that within an inch square there are more dots making up the image. The golden number is 300dpi (dots per inch), that way you ll guarantee pin sharp images when we print them. There s a little bit more to it than that, so read on... The lower the dpi the worse your image(s) will look when printed, so please bear this in mind when scanning, manipulating or sourcing images for your project. Images and logos saved from websites are most likely to be between 72-96dpi and are therefore unsuitable for printing. Our design team can help you! We always recommend trying to use the most professional images that you can get hold of, as low quality images can only downgrade your designs. We are happy to purchase images on your behalf, we have an account with Search the site for an image that best fits your needs, send us the reference number and we will supply you with the image for a small cost. Alternatively there are many companies supplying stock images online. Here are a few you might want to consider:

6 BLEED & If you require colour or images to go right to the edge of the page you must provide 3mm of additional artwork to all sides, this is called bleed. Otherwise you risk a white edge appearing at the edges. Crop marks show us where the edge of your artwork is so that we know exactly where to trim it. So, please ensure all jobs have 3mm bleed and crop marks especially when images, colour or text go right to the edge of your page. To create a bleed simply extend your image(s), colour(s) or text 3mm over the edge of the page. When creating a PDF for print, please ensure your PDF page size is large enough to incorporate the bleed i.e. if your flyer is A5 with bleed, make your PDF page size A4. Find out more BLEED SIZE (ADD 3MM) 91mm x 61mm ARTWORK SIZE 85mm x 55mm CROP MARKS MY LOGO Happy Customer e: look@myprint.com t:

7 FONTS AND When sending artwork to print the fonts used must be embedded into the PDF or EPS document for our printers to understand them correctly. This used to be quite complicated, but nowadays it is relatively simple to create a PDF as it automatically embeds the fonts used, assuming that they are the correct format of font... if in any doubt, contact our team and we ll check them for you. We have a wide selection of fonts in our library and you are welcome to visit the office to look through the printed version of the bible. Or, call us to see if we have your house font in our library. If we don t have the font you require we are happy to purchase fonts on your behalf. We use Search the site for the font that best fits your needs, send us the font name and style and we will purchase it for an additional cost. Tips for top print: For PDFs, ensure you embed all fonts when making your PDF. For EPS s ensure you convert all fonts to outlines when making your EPS. Your minimum font size is best set to 5pt. Please use 100% black if text is between 5 to 7pt. Find out more

8 ARTWORK The term artwork is used as a catch-all term for supplied files, for everything from spreadsheets to digital photography, so if you are a legal secretary supplying a Word-created document you are covered by the term as much as a Graphic Designer who supplies us with PDF s We have many programmes to help us get the best from your supplied files; see below for a complete breakdown of the versions we currently support. Versions of Programmes we support: Adobe CS InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat PDF Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint Remember, the best way to send us your file is as a PDF! QuarkXpress 7.5

9 SUPPLYING Creating a booklet is a relatively straight forward process as long as a few basic rules are followed. Your booklet pagination should be in multiples of 4 only, so 4, 8, 12 and so on. The cover is always page 1 and we require one PDF containing all pages. Here s a bit more detail... The page total of your booklet will be divisible by 4; we understand that not every booklet will contain an even number of pages that matches this and we may be required to add a blank page or two to make it work. The most common places for blank pages are on the inside of the covers and at the back of the booklet - if you would prefer them elsewhere you can add them to your PDF as blank pages. Please supply your booklets in singlepage format running in the correct order from start to finish i.e. a 20 page booklet will run from pages 1-20, page 1 being the front cover and page 20 being the back cover. The closer you get to the centre pages of a booklet, the more has to be trimmed from the page edges. Our imposition software does make allowances for this. However, it is recommended that you do not have text, page numbers or images closer than 5mm to all edges. Please do not supply your files imposed as printers pairs or spreads; instead supply work 1-up and we will impose the work before printing. Find out more

10 CREATE PDFs are, in most cases, the best format for you to provide your artwork in. The file sizes are relatively small and our printers understand PDFs. As long as you make sure images are 300dpi and all colours are in CMYK, of course. We request all your artwork to be supplied as high resolution, 300dpi. When faced with the various options these are best for commercial printing: Resolution should be set to High Resolution Compression Settings for both colour and greyscale should be set to 300dpi Auto-compression set as maximum You should embed all fonts Create your PDF with 3mm of bleed and crop marks If you have the opportunity view your PDF with Output Preview open before submitting it for print as this gives the most accurate representation of how the file will look once printed, and may flag up errors that aren t visible without Output Preview open. If you are using Adobe Acrobat Pro X you can find Outlook Preview by following: Tools> Print Production> Output Preview (for other versions of Adobe Acrobat instructions may vary)

11 PACKAGING InDesign is arguably the best desk top publishing tool out there. It allows you to export PDFs, EPSs, among other formats, and you can package the file along with all the used fonts and images, we ll take care of the rest... Please ensure all fonts and images used in your artwork are supplied to us in a separate folder using the Package function under the File menu. Zip the folder and then send it to us by using the Send Us A File button on our website. You can find this on the homepage on the top right corner of the Zest website, or by going to It is good working practice to include a screen shot of the artwork or a PDF but not essential - it allows us to check the artwork we receive against it so we can be sure nothing has moved or is missing.

12 PROOF PERMISSIONS QR CODES One of the most overlooked part of the process, making it look pretty is one thing, checking for spelling mistakes is another... Please ensure you have permission when using copyrighted material in your design We are happy to print QR codes and barcodes but we cannot take no responsibility for them Although we pay close attention to detail when supplying printready files it is your responsibility to ensure spelling, grammar and contact details are correct before sending them to us for printing. Reprints are liable to charges. e.g. cartoon characters, maps, and other companies logos or trademarks. Note: certain items, for example, bank notes, are unable to be reprinted by law. If you supply a job containing a QR code without a bleed, we will need to enlarge your job to create bleed which will, in turn, enlarge any QR codes present on the artwork and this may cause issues with use.

13 t: www. e: 12 Grove Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN21 4TJ United Kingdom Zest Printing 2014