Printing Tips
The following print tips are for your benefit. You will find useful information that will help you with getting your print job done in an efficient and cost effective manner.
Work with your printer at the start of a project. Consulting a printer at the early part of a job will usually save you time, money & frustration.
JPEG's AND GIF's are too low in resolution for commercial printing. As a general rule scan at 2400dpi for printing and save it as a TIFF Do your work at 100% the size of the printed piece and allow for proper margins where you want it to fold!
Resize all halftone and four color scans in PhotoShop or any other paint program. Resizing in the page programs or draw programs can lead to long imaging (RIP) time DO NOT compress the scans in PhotoShop! Export scans or graphics at the size they will print.
Avoid missing images by getting a preflight utility program that collects images in addition to fonts while checking your files for other problems.
Get a deep, rich black on your printing. Use the following CMYK values for black (do not use for small text)
Cyan - 40%,
Magenta - 40%,
Yellow - 20%,
Black - 100%
This technique will give you a deep black where you have heavy black ink coverage on your printing.
If we create artwork for you: then we will keep it in secure storage for 24 months. We may store it on our servers for longer than that, but it will no longer be backed up We do not guarantee the safe storage of your artwork: norton print will always give you a copy of your artwork if you ask for it, it's yours and we recommend that you store this safely.
BLEED
(what is bleed)
"bleed" is an extra bit of the background graphics or pictures that we trim off when we finish your printing. We need 3mm bleed all the way around if your artwork goes to the edge. We are here to help Just ask
Top tip - don't put text too close to the edge (it doesn't look great and there is the risk of a little bit being trimmed off) and don't put fine lines (i.e. a border) too close to the edge.
We prefer Adobe PDFs! If you can create a PDF you will have much closer control over what we print for you. Norton Print Ltd have the latest versions of the Creative Suite.
(We can work with just about anything, but to prevent delays, we recommend the following:)
1) Build the document to actual trim size, with bleed extending outside of the document. Make sure all placed images reach the bleed.
2) Never build in readers or printers spreads, never step out a page like you would for digital printing, build as single pages-never place 2 8.5"x11"s in an 11"x17" page, and never build in a press layout. Printers have programs for imposition, and pre imposing pages in any way only adds work. For perfect bound books with pages that bleed; do not use facing pages.
3) Use CMYK images, if not sure of image quality, ask to have color reviewed (the small investment is worth it!)
4) When submitting a press ready pdf, include bleed using the proper marks . Use press ready and embed everything. Ask your printer for presets for pdf.
5) Hardcopy if it won't print for you, there's a good chance it won't print for the printing company. (100% size is preferred)
6) If you have changed the page size from the original plan discussed with your printer, tell them as soon as you know! Even a small size change of 1/4" can mean that the entire job may need to be re-engineered and re-quoted as it may not fit on the sheet size or machine originally planned for.
7) COLLECT, PACKAGE, or whatever the software you use calls the function. If the process aborts, there is a good chance something has been moved and a link is broken, and you can almost always plan on a missing file or font.
8) Communicate expectations: it's a great idea to copy the estimate for the project, especially when there were versions of the estimate, circle the quantity, list any additional services that aren't part of the quote, write down required completion date and delivery instructions and submit the estimate with the job.
9) Always specify the exact colors to be used for printing. We often get files with 4cp and 3 spot colors, and 2 spot are supposed to convert to cmyk and one needs to print as a spot, but it's our guess which one to print as spot, and oh, by the way, we used pms 187 in the file, but we really want pms 188 on press and the ink has been ordered already!
10) Discuss up front how much time is really needed to produce your project allowing ample time for each step.
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