Things to Watch Out For

In any business, the more prepared one side of the job is, the quicker the other side can complete it. The same is true with printing.

We have put together a list of important details necessary for incoming digital files. If you follow these simple guidelines, your job will take less time to process.

In many cases we would like to work from a PDF file (Adobe Acrobat File), as long as it is built properly. When creating a PDF, either for production or for proof, completely embed the fonts used instead of omitting them or subsetting them. Embedding fonts only adds 40kb to the PDF - insignificant even if the document is using twenty fonts. Subsetting fonts only includes the characters from a font that are actually used in the document – and if you later want to edit the text in the PDF or combine multiple PDFs, you may run into trouble.

If you are sending us traditional files, it’s a good idea to organize your job before sending it by gathering all of the files used to produce the piece. For instance, put your picture files, text files, EPS files, TIFF files, and your layout files all in one folder. This makes it easy to determine which files are being used. Then you can also simply compress the entire folder and send it on its way.

Following these simple instructions will help us tremendously, and will save you time and money.

• Always supply us with everything your file uses including any fonts, artwork, clip art, photos, etc. used in the final piece.
• Using ‘Save for Service Provider’ in Pagemaker, ‘Collect for Output’ in Quark, or ‘Package’ in InDesign makes it easy to collect all of the graphics and fonts needed to produce the piece into one location. Make sure you always copy and include the fonts.
• If you are planning on emailing files or uploading them to our FTP site, be sure to compress the folder containing them using StuffIt or Zip compression utilities.
• Photos and other placed images should ideally have a resolution of at least 225 dots per inch. Also make sure that photos/graphics placed into layouts are in the correct color mode, such as Grayscale or CMYK – never use RGB. We can force CMYK separations from RGB later in the RIPing process, but the results are unpredictable and you’re relying on the RIP to decide what the color of an image should be.
• It’s a good idea to check that your job separates correctly by printing laser separations, or by creating color separated PDFs. Additionally, if you have access to Acrobat 6 or if you’re using InDesign to create your layout, you can preview separations right in the program.
• Remember that black text should be only black, unless it is a design feature to have a rich black (black plus other colors). Even then it’s not a good idea to use it for text since it can make the type (especially serif fonts) look blurry.
• Photos or graphics should be saved in either eps or tif formats – please avoid jpeg. Jpeg is a ‘lossy’ compression scheme, meaning that the graphic permanently loses resolution every time you save it as a jpeg.
• Creating a PDF of the job before it moves down the line is a good idea as well - if there are font substitutions or text flow issues later in the process, we can easily check what it was supposed to look like. This sounds redundant if there are lasers, but if the lasers get misplaced it can be a lifesaver.