Webmaster Widget

By: Brad Erg
I have worked in the printing industry for years now and I keep helping customers all day long, and they all seem to have the same problems with their artwork, after a short discussion and a few laughs, usually their problems are simple little mistakes that can be easily solved and avoided, in an effort to help, I have written this article to provide a little insight into the printing industry for newcomers.

Your artwork should be started with a new file and you should select “300” as the DPI (dots per inch) mode, and you should select “CMYK” mode and never “RGB”, also your artwork should be saved at 300 dpi resolution and CMYK mode before you send them to us for printing. RGB files cannot be printed on professional four color presses. Not every RGB color has a CMYK equivalent and the result could be more than just subtle color shifts and will just look “Weird” or “off”.

Your artwork must have a Bleed (0.0625 inch past final document size) around the entire design which is required for cutting and also keep a 0.125 inch safe zone around your design.

Which file formats are preferred?

High Res Acrobat Portable Document Format (.pdf) - Preferred

Tagged Image File Format (.tiff) - Recommended

Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) - Recommended

JPG image format (.jpg)

Adobe Photoshop Image (.psd)

Adobe Illustrator Artwork (.ai)

What if my image is not 300 dpi?

I recommend that all images and artwork be a minimum of 300 dpi, if it is not it will most likely be rejected by the printer, and then you will have to redo it, blah, creating an image from scratch in 300 DPI is so much easier than trying to correct an image that is not 300 DPI, and the final product will be so much better.

What is Bleed?

Professional printing machines cannot print right to the edge of a sheet of paper. To create that effect, the printer must use a sheet which is larger than the document size. Then the printer prints beyond the edge of the document size (1/16 inch which is 0.0625 inch), then cuts the paper down to the document size, so always give yourself a little extra room by keeping important images and text away from the border, and allowing your background to go past the edge.

What is a Safety Zone?

The safe margin is an imaginary line inside the document from the edge of the document size (1/8 inch which is 0.125 inch). Safe margin can contain pictures and should not contain text, when a printer cuts a stack of 1000 papers at a time, sometimes the cutting blades drift a bit, this safety zone allows for the blades to drift without cutting off anything important.

More helpful information is available at www.MyClubPrint.com

Brad Erg is a printing consultant for several large manufacturing firms, and is a managing partner for www.MyClubPrint.com.