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Thread: Publishing artwork for print

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    Publishing artwork for print

    I often get clients who don't know how to publish their final artwork for print so I am posting this in hope it will help those people.

    If you are creating any print file such as a flyer or brochure; you will need to know a few things that the printers need in order to print your artwork without problems.

    Firstly, all images you use in your document need to be 300dpi. 300dpi is always used for print and 72dpi is always used for screen/digital.

    When setting up your document in your design program you need to ensure you create the artwboard at the exact size you want - we will use an A5 flyer for this example.

    You would create the artboard at 210x148mm and then ensure you add bleed to the artboard. Bleed is used by printers to ensure that there are no white edges on your finished product which will leave it looking unprofessional. Usually a safe bleed is 5mm. This means that there is an added 5mm to each edge of your artboard.

    When creating your artwork on the artboard you need to ensure the artwork follows through into the bleed area.

    Once your design is ready to save to print, you will need to save to PDF. Make sure you specify the bleed must be taken into account when exporting and also to add crop marks to show the printers where the document needs to be trimmed.

    Hope you find this helpful and let me know if you have any other questions on this topic.

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    Another one would be to add die lines, perforation and or fold marks:

    If your artwork will need to have die lines to be used when doing a custom shape or cut to your artwork you will need to follow these simple steps:

    When you create your die lines, they need to be exact to the millimetre. You shoudl create them in Magenta so easy to be seen by the printers.

    When creating fold marks they will need to be exactlky in the position required so measuring is essential. Make the line dashed.

    If you need perfortion on your artwork, create the line in magenta so easy to be seen by the printer. You should create a dotted line for perforation so as to stand out from the actual die line.

    I have written these guides on my website so all my own info so I don't have a link to an article.

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    One more I thought which could be helpful to a few; getting images ready for your print artwork:

    If you have software such as photoshop, you will need to take the image you are going to be using for your artwork into photoshop. You will firstly ensure the image is in a CMYK colour mode - in photoshop you would go to Image>Mode and select CMYK if not already selected.

    Then you must ensure the image is at 300dpi, go to Image>Image Size. Then look where it says resolution. If it is anything lower than 300dpi, change it to 300 and make sure your width and height stay the same, it changes as you change the resoloution so you will need to input the dimensions that were there after changing resolution.

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    We work with PDF files and prefer customers to use DTP program to create the artwork. You should always discuss with your printer what you expect. We found files created with photoshop give us the most problems as the fonts aren't embedded the colour is an RGB black which prints out dark grey etc.
    Lance we need to educate the customers and I would start with page sizes, we don't have letter and legal size printing in SA we use the A sizes.
    What do you guys expect from your print shop?
    Only stress when you can change the outcome!

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    Quote Originally Posted by IanF View Post
    We work with PDF files and prefer customers to use DTP program to create the artwork. You should always discuss with your printer what you expect. We found files created with photoshop give us the most problems as the fonts aren't embedded the colour is an RGB black which prints out dark grey etc.
    Lance we need to educate the customers and I would start with page sizes, we don't have letter and legal size printing in SA we use the A sizes.
    What do you guys expect from your print shop?
    By DTP program are you referring to Corel Draw or something like that? I use the Creative Suite mainly Adobe InDesign for print, which I find does the job perfectly.

    The reason for this post is I often get clients who say they have their print ready artwork but when they show it to me when it needs to go into print, there is no bleed on a 72 page booklet for example so they have to go through individually (or me) and add bleed to each page.

    I always supply my artwork with 5mm bleed and crop marks. The sizing I haven't experienced too many people having issues there.

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    We use coreldraw and indesign works fine. It is just what you are used to. For bleed the internal bleed or safe cutting margin is also important.
    Only stress when you can change the outcome!

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    That is true Ian, the Trim on the inside. I hope these are helpful to people either way.

    Thanks for your input.

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    Thanks great advice. Do any of yous do book binding. Need some note books A5 100 pages and them perfect binded?

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    I would be happy to get you a quote, please mail full specs through to info@bonsaimedia.co.za and I can surely assist.

    Thanks,
    Lance

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