File Preparation for Print

Every printed product requires artwork in digital format in order to complete the printing process.  This digital file can be prepared by you the customer, our design staff or a third party graphic designer.  If you submit your own digital file design for print there are no additional charges other than for the cost of the printing itself, unless however, your design does not meet the design requirements for the product, then you will be required to correct the issue and then re-submit the file or have us correct the issues for you for an additional fee.  The same holds true if you submit a file designed by a third party which does not meet our guidelines.  If you choose for us to design the file for you there is a design fee.

If you are printing your own artwork we prefer you submit to us a press ready PDF file, but we also accept other file types including Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Pagemaker, Quark, CorelDraw, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Open Office, Scribus (free open source software), or any other file design made into a .pdf file, .png files, .jpeg or .jpg files, .tiff files, .eps (encapsulated postscript), .ps (postscript), .bmp (bitmap).  Make sure you use the correct color space for the type of print job, see below for more information on color space.

Free Templates
Templates are pre-laid out files with guidelines for where the printed image should be placed on the sheet, and also shows where and where not to place key elements, such as text, graphics and photos, so for instance they don't get cut off or end up in the middle of a fold.  We offer templates for all of our standard products and can also supply templates for custom products as well.  You will find links to the appropriate template right on the product page in the description area if we have a template available for that product.  Just download the template for your application and use it as a guide.

What are bleeds?
Bleed is a term used in printing that runs right to the edge or "bleeds" of the edge of the sheet.  When printing a bleed, the ink area is printed beyond where the cut line would be by 1/16 to 1/4 of an inch.  Then after printing, the excess printing is cut away leaving print right to the very edge with no margin or unprinted paper showing.  Typically we require 1/16 of an inch minimum on any edge where there is ink bleed.  Typical bleeds would be a background tint of color or a background photograph or graphic that bleeds off the paper edge.  We also recommend keeping text or other printing that you do not want cut into at least 1/8" away from the cut edge of the printed sheets.  We typically run letter size 8 1/2" x 11" sheets 2 up on 12" x 18" when bleeds are required giving able room for crop marks, bleed and bleed marks, color bars, and registration marks.

What is Color Space?
An assigned color space in a file design affects how the color values are interpreted by devices including your monitor, digital camera, inkjet printer, laser printer, and professional printing equipment such as digital presses and offset printing presses.  Your computer monitor, digital camera, most desktop printers and some other devices use an RGB (red, blue green) color space while most professional printers use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to interpret the intended color values.  Your RGB file while it may look good on your screen may appear diiferent on the final printed product due to color shifts of the RGB data in your file to CMYK data values, which is why we recommend you use CMYK.  All full color print jobs should be set up for CMYK color space in your file design as well as any elements placed in the design such as logos, graphics or photographs.  All of the elements can be assigned a CMYK profile.  If you submit an RGB file for CMYK printing the final product may have colors that appear different than what you or your designer intended.  Also, we can work with bitmap files and grayscale files which have no color information for single color jobs.  If you have a single color job other than black ink, or a two color job then you should specify the appropriate Pantone Spot Color Ink(s) to be used.  For example a typical 2 color business card would used Pantone Reflex Blue and Red 185 inks.  The Pantone libraries for Spot Color and CMYK inks can be found in the Adobe, Quark, Scribus, Corel and Microsoft Publisher programs.

Image Resolution
Images such as photographs from a digital camera or scanner should be a minimum of 300 dpi or dots per inch in resolution for quality printing.  Anything less can produce a pixelated, rough or fuzzy look instead of a nice clean crisp image.  Most images found on websites are low resolution of 72-96 dpi and are not good quality for printing.  Also vector logos, images and graphics should be 1200 dpi or greater.

Creating Quality PDF Files for Commercial Printing
When exporting to a pdf you should make sure the PDF setting are set so that color and grayscale images are a minimum of 300 dpi  and not downsampled lower than 300 and monochrome images are 1200 dpi minimum not downsampled lower than 1200.  See screen shot below: