GI Prepress Tips

Fonts

Please be sure to include ALL fonts with your job. This should include fonts in eps files that are placed in your page layout document. In InDesign you may want to use the “package” feature to collect all necessary files for your job and for Quark you may want to use the “collect for output” feature.

Also avoid stylizing fonts. Clicking on the “bold” or “italic” button feature in your page layout program could be creating a font that is not actually installed on your computer and although you can see the result you want on screen, it will not appear to be bold or italic when output to a high resolution output device.

Images

Be sure to include ALL images with your job. Try to avoid embedding images in your page layout program. In InDesign you may want to use the “package” feature to collect all necessary files for your job and for Quark you may want to use the “collect for output” feature.

Convert all RGB images to CMYK before transmitting your files. Also, when saving an image as a tif, please do not use LZW compression.

Halftone images should be no smaller than 300 DPI when placed at 100% size in your page layout document. Bitmap images should be 1200 DPI when placed at 100% size. Enlarging images more than 10% in your page layout program can cause significant loss in quality.

Rotate and crop your images in the original application instead of your page layout document. This reduces rip time and postscript errors.

Bleed and Trim Size

Build your document to be the exact size of the finished project. Do not float your artwork on a page size larger that the finish trim size. (ex: designing a 3.5”x2” business card on an 8.5”x11” page size and drawing on crops. The page size should be 3.5”x2” with bleeds extending 1/8” past the trim onto the pasteboard.)

All images, borders and/or artwork that prints to the trim line must bleed 1/8 inch onto the pasteboard. (.125” bleed)

Spot Colors

Slight variations in PMS color names result in extra plates and additional prepress time to correct. (ex: Reflex Blue U and Reflex Blue C). Be sure that the PMS color names in your imported images and eps files are an exact match to the PMS color names in your page layout document.

Clean Up

Documents should only include the colors that you want printed. Please delete any unused colors.
Also, please delete any unused items from the pasteboard and any pages not required for output.

Supply your file as 1-up and do not supply as spreads. We will impose the pages for you.

Include a Printout or Final PDF

Please include a print out of your final draft so that we can compare and check for type reflow. It is best to include composite and color separated lasers and/or pdfs. Please also include a folding sample for orders that fold.

Need help? Contact your Account Manager and they will be glad to assist you.

When Sending Your Files Electronically

All Documents and supporting files should be compressed using sit, sea, sitx or zip for MAC and zip for PC.

Compressed files under 6mb can be emailed. Anything over 6mb should be uploaded to us via FTP. Please contact your account manager for your own secure login and password info if you do not already have one.