File Setup & Templates

Most print problems are file problems, and almost all of them are avoidable. This page covers everything we check for. Get these five things right and your job will print the way you expect it to.

Bleed, trim and safe area

Three lines matter on every print file:

• Bleed — extend any background colour or image 0.125 in (3 mm) past the finished edge on all sides. Guillotines have a tolerance of about a millimetre, so without bleed you get a thin white sliver on one edge.
• Trim — the finished size of the piece.
• Safe area — keep text and logos at least 0.125 in (3 mm) inside the trim. Anything closer risks being shaved.

For a 3.5 × 2 in business card that means artwork built at 3.75 × 2.25 in with everything important inside the middle 3.25 × 1.75 in.

Resolution

Supply images at 300 DPI at final printed size. A 300 DPI image scaled up 200% is a 150 DPI image, and it will look soft. Images pulled from a website are usually 72 DPI and almost never survive printing.

Large format is the exception: a banner viewed from three metres away prints perfectly well at 100–150 DPI, because nobody puts their nose against it. If you are unsure, send it and we will tell you.

Colour

Build files in CMYK, not RGB. Screens are RGB and can show colours that simply do not exist in ink — bright oranges, electric blues and neon greens are the usual casualties. If you supply RGB we convert it, and the conversion may shift those colours.

For rich black on large areas use C 60 M 40 Y 40 K 100 rather than K 100 alone, which prints as a washed-out charcoal. For small text, use K 100 alone — rich black on 8pt type causes registration fuzz.

Fonts

Outline your fonts, or embed them in the PDF. A font we do not have is a font we substitute, and you will not like our choice. Outlining is safest.

Avoid type below 6pt, and avoid fine reversed-out type (white on dark) below 8pt — ink spread fills in the counters and it turns to mush.

File format

We prefer print-ready PDF (PDF/X-1a or X-4). We also accept AI, EPS, high-resolution JPG, PNG and TIFF. Send single-page PDFs for single-sided jobs and two-page PDFs for double-sided, front page first.

Flatten transparency if you are unsure how your software handles it, and do not supply files with crop marks unless we have asked for them.

Folded and multi-page work

For anything folded, tell us the fold type — half, tri-fold, z-fold, gate. Panel widths are not equal on a tri-fold: the panel that folds inside must be about 1.5 mm narrower or it buckles.

Booklets must be supplied as single pages in reading order, not as printer spreads. We impose them. Page counts must be divisible by four for saddle stitching.

Templates

We check all of this for you

Every file gets reviewed by a person before it goes near a press. If the bleed is missing, the resolution is short, or the black will print muddy, we tell you and explain how to fix it. It costs nothing and it happens on every order — it is not an upsell.

If you would rather not deal with any of this, our design team can build the file for you from a description.