Services - Tips To Help Your Print Job Run Smoothly
These suggestions were put together from answers to frequently asked questions posed to the staff of the Service Bureau. If you have a question and this page does not help you, you may contact the Prepress Manager.
FILE PREPARATION
1. Even though we support many different types of software, when creating your design we suggest you use either Adobe InDesign or Quark Xpress. These two programs are designed for offset output and will make your project go smoothly. If you do not have either of these, consider giving us a PDF of your design. While our ability to make corrections to a PDF is very limited, the stability of a PDF is a virtual guarantee that your project will output the way you designed it.
Note: Adobe PageMaker is no longer a current Adobe product. For the time being, we will continue to support it.
2. ALWAYS remember to PLACE your images in your layout file, NEVER copy and paste them. This allows your layout software to call to a LINK which is the hi-res file represented by the preview that you see in your layout.
3. Collect your layout file and the images (which are the hi-res links) into a "collection" folder. It makes everything go smoothly when all the necessary files are in one place.
1. NEVER use the "style" commands in your layout file to make fonts bold or italic. ALWAYS use the actual bold or italic font. What this means is: when you are typing along, and you want something to appear bold or italic, DO NOT click that little "B" or "I" button! Go to your font menu and choose the bold or italic version of the font.
2. ALWAYS collect your fonts into their own subfolder inside your collection folder. Call it something like "fonts."
3. Postscript fonts use two files to work. These are called screen fonts and printer fonts. When collecting your fonts together, REMEMBER to include BOTH of the file types.
IMAGES
1. MOST IMPORTANT! Make sure your images are AT LEAST 300dpi at the size they are being used in your layout file. Otherwise, they will begin to lose definition and appear "stepped."
2. If your job is in color, make sure that the images you use are CMYK and NOT RGB! Especially if you are building your design in Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand and have a habit of embedding your images. There may be an undesirable color shift.
3. If you are printing a job that has SPOT colors, DO NOT use RGB or CMYK images. While we are able to separate CMYK files into C, M, Y and K, and substitute spot inks on press, we recommend that you take the time to assign spot colors in advance: it makes proofing your job a lot easier.