Supplying electronic files ...
... what you see isn't always what you get!
More and more of our clients want to design their own jobs. Since we would like to give you the best results possible when printing them, 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.
Fonts
We have thousands of fonts, but even common fonts like Helvetica or Arial have many different versions and may vary from computer to computer. Include your fonts or convert to outlines.
CMYK Black or RGB Black
Wherever possible use just Black for fine text (Cyan 0 Magenta 0 Yellow 0 Black 100). RGB black may look thick and slightly fuzzy.
Pantone Spot Colours
If your logo requires a specific spot colour we will replicate it as close as possible. Our Digital Press converts spot colour to 4-colour, so some spot colours we are unable to match. Always see a proof.
Bleed
“Bleed” is when the colour goes off the edge of your paper. If you do not allow for bleed, any misalignment during printing creates an unwanted white edge around the finished product. Extend graphics and backgrounds past the page edge of your final trim size by 1/8". This excess will be trimmed off after printing. When you save as a PDF, turn on bleeds when you save.
Photos
Photos which may look great on your phone or monitor may be too low quality to use for print - especially photos taken from your website or Facebook. If you are googling images, search “large” images and do not select ones that are copyrighted. If you are sending us photos from your mobile device make sure you select 'original size'.
Sending
When you have your original document images and fonts collected in one folder, you can Zip your folder to upload. Small files can be sent as an email attachment, and large files can be sent through the Send a File feature on our website or DropBox.
A Conversation about Canva
Canva is ok. You can save your file as a high quality PDF with bleeds (and crops). If you can not figure out the bleeds you can cheat! Make your page .25” larger than needed in both directions, then extend any background images and we will undercut after printing back to your original size. Do not put any critical information in the extra area to be cut off.
Photoshop
Photoshop files should be flattened for best results. Avoid designing complete documents in Photoshop - text and logos should always be added in a layout program. If you save as a JPG save it as the highest quality possible.
Send us your artwork as a PDF. Include bleeds (or add .25” to your canvas size). Select "print-quality" or "press-quality", this will make the best quality file. While “web-quality” might look good on the screen, the lowest PDF creation settings will resample your images down to 72 dpi.
Fonts: Check "Include all fonts" or send them with your file.
A Quick Word About "Word"
Microsoft Word is a word processing program, not a professional layout program. Your information can be supplied in Word if we are designing your job for you. We can certainly convert your Word file to PDF for printing, but we will show you a proof to check there have been no adjustments or font substitutions. Different versions of Word produce different results. There will be additional charges if we have to fix your Word document before printing. Make your page size your finished size - enlarging Word files after the fact does not work well.
Charts, graphs and spreadsheets supplied in Excel need to be saved as PDF in order to print.
If you have any questions about saving files for print, don't hesitate to contact us.