Digital File Specs
Supplying electronic files... how to make sure what you see is what you get!
At Papyrus Printing, we are finding that many of our clients are providing files electronically, either by email, CD, USB drive or FTP. Since we would like to give you the best results possible when printing your jobs, you can help us by following the general graphics and software guidelines listed below. Additional time required by our prepress department to fix or rebuild files will be charged at our standard rates.
General Pre-Press & File Guidelines
We have hundreds of fonts available on our workstations, but even common fonts like Helvetica or Arial have many different versions, and may vary from computer to computer. If you are unsure how to include your fonts or convert to vector curves, call us before sending your files.
Black or K
Computer monitors and television sets use RGB colour mode to simulate the range of visible colours - each pixel is made up of 3 colour values: Red, Green & Blue. When a full-colour job is printed on our press, we use 4 inks to recreate the spectrum of colours: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black (CMYK). Some software (such as Microsoft Word) only uses RGB colour - i.e. what appears to be black text on your screen or consumer inkjet printer will be Cyan, Magenta, Yellow AND Black on our press. Which just creates a big mess if ink.
Pantone colours
If your job contains only 2 or 3 colours, you will likely choose Pantone numbers for the inks. Check that all Pantone colours use the same name - sometimes different programs will refer to the same colour by slightly different names, i.e. Pantone 347 CVC and Pantone 347, which would incorrectly result in two plate separations being created. As well, not all colours can be accurately reproduced using the CMYK process - in particular some fluorescents and metallic shades can only be produced with Pantone inks. Feel free to drop by our shop and confirm the colour you want is the same one that is specified in your files - again, the colour you see represented on an RGB computer monitor may not be the same as the solid ink colour on paper.
Bleed
In order to get a finished printed piece where the ink extends right to the edge of the paper, we must print a slightly larger image and then trim off the excess paper. When allowing for bleed borders in your document, make sure the document size is the same as the paper size, and then drag out graphics or backgrounds to extend past the page borders. 1/8" is an acceptable amount of bleed coverage to add.
Photos
As digital cameras become more and more popular and inexpensive, many clients are supplying digital images for use in their printed materials. Always use the highest resolution setting your camera will allow when taking photos that will be reproduced in print - many cameras will default to 640 x 480 pixels, which may look great on your monitor, but is generally too low in quality to use for print. If you have photo editing software, make sure all images are converted to the CMYK colour mode before sending.
Scanning
Scan colour and grayscale photos at 300 dpi, and bitmap (line art) graphics at 1200 dpi. Avoid scanning from printed works (postcards, magazines, newspapers) if possible - your scanner will pick up the halftone patterns and may cause unintended moire effects when we try and reproduce it on our press. If you are unsure of the quality of your images or do not have access to a scanner, we can scan your original photographs or plug in your digital camera, just don't forget to bring the cord!
Sending to us
When you have your original document images and fonts collected in one folder, you can use a compression utility such as Stuffit or WinZip to compress the folder. Files up to 5 MB can be sent as an email attachment, and files up to 100 MB can be sent through the Send a File feature on our website. If your job is larger than 100 MB we will require a CD.
Graphics Software Guidlines
Adobe Photoshop files should be flattened and saved as a EPS for best results. Avoid designing complete documents in Photoshop - text and logos should always be added in a layout program to avoid rough or "pixelated" edges. High-resolution JPEGs are usually acceptable, but most images taken from the internet are only 72 dpi and are not suitable for print reproduction. The JPEG file format has been designed to allow very high compression ratios, but as the file size gets smaller, the quality decreases considerably. If you have no other options than to save in JPEG format, make sure the compression is set as low as possible (larger file size).
Using Adobe Distiller to create PDF files from your original application is the recommended method - even if your software has an "Export as PDF" function built in. Many PDF files are created with the default "web-only" settings, and are not suitable for high-quality reproduction on a press. While the PDF is by design a very compatible and universal format, there are several output settings that need to be checked to ensure high quality output:
Fonts: Always check "Include all fonts" and "Subset Embedded Fonts @ 100%" in your Distiller or Export PDF settings. If your font has not been saved properly within the PDF file it may print out at our end with a substituted font instead.
Images: One crucial difference between a "screen" or "web" PDF and a "press" PDF is the compression on the photos in your job. While they both might look good on the screen, the lowest PDF creation settings (which will be the default on some systems) will resample all of your carefully scanned images to 72 dpi - but we need 250-350 dpi to get a good half-tone on the press for colour/grayscale images, and at least 600 dpi for bitmap/lineart images. A quick way to check the image resolution in your PDF file before sending it to us is to zoom in to 400%. If the text or images look jagged or pixelated, the resolution is too low and you will not get a clean half-tone on the press.
A Quick Word About Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor, not a professional layout program. Text can be supplied in Word format if we are designing your job here. We can usually print black & white files directly from Word, however as Word has no support for the CMYK colour mode, there will usually be additional graphic charges to fix and convert Word documents to a useable format for full-colour or spot colour printing. If your job is any size other than 8.5" x 11", please adjust your page size in Word before starting. If your file has photos in it, please include image files separately as well as your original Word file.
Charts, graphs and spreadsheets may be supplied in Excel format, however the graphics department will have to rebuild the files in our software.
If you have any questions about saving files for electronic output, don't hesitate to contact us.