How to send print ready artwork
We want to provide you the best quality printing possible and we certainly have the staff, equipment. But to provide this we need you to give us the best possible artwork to work from.
A little time spent at this stage will pay absolute dividends on the quality of the finished product.
So, in short. We would want…
CMYK with a 3mm bleed with crops. 300DPI at actual size with fonts outlined and file types PDF, tiff,eps or Ai. 😉
Colours and Bleed
Colours
For full colour print, all images must be in CMYK four colour (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). All swatches used in the artwork must also be made from CMYK.
Bleed
Make sure all edges have the 3mm bleed – Any images or colours touching the edge of the page should bleed over 3mm to avoid white borders on your final job.
Crop Marks
Don’t forget your crop marks to indicate the final size required – Crop marks on your jobs indicates the final size of your printed area. Ensure the documents page size is the finished trim size
Resolution
PDF should be high resolution at 300dpi – High resolution PDF’s look sharp and clear, it’s possible to print from a lower resolution but pixelated is possible. Large format printing at 150dpi+ is sufficient
Text
Outline all text – Its best practice to outline your fonts. Doing this will make the text into vector paths which in turn will make your text sharp. Or alternatively embed your fonts.
Just a few more tips:-
- Check that any trim, cut or score marks are indicated and are outside of the live print area.
- Check that black text is fully 100% and not a CMYK mix.
- Make sure any white text is set not to overprint.
- Check that any multiple page PDF consists of single pages – running from the front cover to the back page, including any blank pages if needed. In short single pages, not spreads.
- If artwork includes folds, please ensure the document folds as intended and the crease/score marks are correctly positioned.
Colours
Process Colours are referred to as CMYK, Cyan (C), Magenta (M), Yellow (Y) and Black (K), four colour process or even just process. These different colours are used to reproduce a colour image. Combined together in varying proportions CMYK produces the full colour spectrum.
Pantone colours are often specified for printing as a ‘spot colour’, a specific colour printed using an ink made exclusively and typically for jobs which require no full colour imagery like colour matching for corporate branding to ensure consistent colour reproduction.
- Pantone spot colours that are intended to be four colour process and litho printed should be converted to CMYK using the Pantone+ Color Bridge® library. This is not necessary for digital printing as our digital presses create a colour simulation for spot colours.
- Convert all RGB colours to CMYK as colour separations for printing cannot be made from RGB files.
- If your job is full colour, please ensure that you work entirely in CMYK. If your program does not support CMYK or Pantone, we will need to convert your colours before printing.
- Please bear in mind that monitors and desktop printers do not produce accurate representations of the press printed colour.
Overview
As part of our service here at Essex Banners we’ll check your artwork over before printing and send you a proof if that’s needed . It’s still possible though that we’ll still have to edit your PDF file to optimise your artwork for our own print processes.
But we do appreciate that all of the above can be a bit daunting but don’t forget our artwork team is only a call away to help you get through any issues.
Some of these we can probably fix real quick but others do take time and may incur a charge.
As an alternative to all of the above we can assist in creating your artwork for you so it’s right from the start – alternatively just call us or email us if you get stuck!
