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Print
Ready Master
The days
of letterpress and ‘Letraset’ are well behind us. These days,
almost without exception, the original ‘print master’ (or
‘artwork’) that will be used to drive the printing machines is
generated on a computer and is presented to the print machine as a
computer file.
Preparation
of artwork can be a minefield and requires a high degree of
technical knowledge and expertise to get right – fortunately we are
here to help. For a small fee we will set up the artwork for you so
that it prints properly and provide you with a proof to check and
authorise before we go to print.
If you
do decide to prepare the artwork yourself, or have a designer to do
it for you, please make sure you or they take the time to study the
following notes carefully – they have been prepared to ensure that
your job prints properly first time, every time.
We work
to a pdf workflow so if you do prepare your own artwork you should
be aiming to provide us with a
separate
high resolution PDF file with 3mm bleed and crop marks for each
page that is to be printed.
For help
with preparing PDFs see:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/asn/en/print_resource_center/Acrobat6PrintPress.pdf
Depending
on the output device, we can sometimes prepare printable PDFs for
you from native file formats such as Word,
PowerPoint, CorelDraw, Illustrator and the
like. There may be a charge for this depending on the amount of
conversion work required.
1.
Bitmap images should be at 300 ppi final size and colour model
should be cmyk. TIFF files are preferable to compressed files
(e.g.jpeg).
2. Large
solid black print areas should be avoided, but if essential should
be 100% black and 40% cyan.
3. Try
to avoid large solid areas of one colour - best to break them up
with text or images, or add a texture to them.
4. Logos
should be provided as fully editable vector files (e.g.Illustrator
eps files) with text converted to curves and colours as spot
colours.
5. Leave
at least a 4mm blank border between the edge of the printed sheet
and any text or design on the sheet.
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