A Guide to PDF Preparation and supplying Print Ready Artwork

We welcome all manner of file formats from Quark to Microsoft Office Products. We are Adobe and Microsoft Partners and our repro-team are highly trained and experienced individuals who are always happy to help.

Sending printready artwork could not simpler!

Our superb FTP service is backed up by an efficient disk collection or postal service.

For more detailed information and specifications please see below or contact a member of our team.

A Guide to Preparing Print Ready Artwork

Below is an easy to follow guide with the basic rules for supplying artwork for print.

File Formats Accepted

Press ready PDF - with all fonts embedded, minimum resolution of 300dpi

Quark Express (upto v7) – supply all fonts and images

Illustrator (upto CS4) – fonts converted to outlines, supply any images not embedded

Indesign (upto CS4) - fonts supplied or converted to outlines, supply any images not embedded

Freehand – fonts converted to paths

Photoshop – layers flattened, at least 300 dpi, EPS or Tiff for best quality (if text features a minimum of 1200dpi is recommended)

Corel Draw – fonts converted to curves then export as Illustrator AI or EPS

Supplying RAW Files

If you wish to send us Raw files prepared using Quark Express, indesign etc., please ensure all elements of the job are supplied, including the layout document, all images and all fonts used. Collect them in clearly marked folders and if you send using are 2gb FTP please compress into one folder using ZIP.

Supplying PDF Artwork

Our preferred format for artwork is high-resolution PDF format. As this is a locked document it gives you confidence that what you send is what you get. It is however important that the PDF is prepared in the correct way. We can send distiller settings that will enable you to do this with ease, please contact one of our team to have the file sent.

PDF Preparation
When creating PDFs using Acrobat Distiller, there are job options which must be applied when supplying artwork for commercial print. These include default resolution, compression settings and font embedding.

Please ensure you choose high resolution. Compression settings for colour and grey scale images should be downsampled to no less than 300dpi with "auto compression" turned off or set on high. Bitmapped (monochrome: i.e. line art) images should be set at 600dpi. Font embedding should be set to "embed all fonts", including "subset fonts."

Download our Acrobat Distiller Settings here.

Bleed

3mm bleed all round is required on all artwork, i.e. save the PDF with 6mm added to each measurement (i.e. for A4 usually 210mm x 297mm, save as 216mm x 303mm). Please include Crop Marks. If artwork is supplied without bleed we may request it is re-supplied.

CMYK not RGB

Please supply all images as CMYK files. RGB images are for screen/web viewing, images for print are output as CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black). Our PDF workflow will automatically convert RGB images to CMYK but colours may alter from original values.

Microsoft Office Files

Microsfot Office files are accepted but are not our preferred format, please ensure all fonts are included.

Imposition

Our PDF workflow does all of the imposition for you so please supply PDFs as individual pages or page order layouts.

Sending Artwork by Email

Maximum file size by email is 20mb. Files larger than this should be sent on disk or suing our secure 2gb FTP

FTP Upload

To send multiple files using the FTP they must be compressed into one folder using ZIP or similar.

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