You've worked hard to make your print project look as professional as possible. Now, by choosing a quality printer and properly preparing your digital files, your job will be everything you've hoped for. Here's some basic information about fonts, file formats, photos, graphics, and general layout issues.

Fonts & Placed Graphics

Our goal is make your job look great on the press. To do so we need the fonts and graphics you have utilized in your page layout program. It is often surprising how many auxiliary files are needed to print even a simple document. Without question, the number one cause of printing errors and production delays is missing graphics or fonts.

Many times the fonts used in your document have split personalities. They may be represented on your hard drive by anywhere from 2 to 16 or more separate files! If your font has bold, semi-bold, demi-bold, oblique or light versions, and italic versions of all those, it is easy to understand why missing one or two critical files is a common error. Ultimately, you'll do yourself a favor by being zealous about font collection. Include every font used anywhere in any version in your project -- that's right even that font you used to make those cool looking comma's must be included. Otherwise we'll be calling you before your job is ready, and that's not the way its meant to be.

Accepted Formats:

We accept jobs from Quark XPress, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, Corel Draw and Adobe Photoshop for either Macintosh or Windows platforms.  But we highly recommend using CorelDraw for the pc. Quark and PageMaker files from Macs work, but often require extra computer time and close oversight to avoid font and RIP difficulties.

General Layout Tips

All the page layout programs we support have some common things that should be checked before sending you r files off into the big bad world.

Are all linked graphics up to date?
We all like to get things right the first time, but often those dynamic graphics and stunning photos have been modified since the first time they were placed in your page layout. Make sure that the most recent versions of all your placed items are shown as up-to-date in the links control box (Pagemaker) and the picture usage utility (Quark XPress). If not, be sure to update them and double check that the scaling applied to them within the layout program has not changed. (sometimes graphics revert to 100% scale when updated).

Be sure to include all of these graphics when you submit your project.

Are the color definitions consistent?
Spot colors that are used in a graphics program, such as CorelDraw, Freehand or Illustrator, and then placed into your page layout must have spot colors named EXACTLY the same as those used in your layout program. For instance, "Pantone 320" and "Pantone 320C" will not separate as the same color, even though they look the same on-screen.

Does your layout manage folds and bleeds correctly?
Many jobs contain elements which are intended to "bleed" across a fold. As a rule, extend these elements 1/16" into or "across" the bleed. Extend elements which bleed off the edge of a page 1/8" past the cut line. While we strive for perfection, these little extra's will give our press and finishing operators the space they need to make sure your project is finished exactly the way you intended.

Imported (Placed) Photos

Unless otherwise specified, we output photos with a 150 linescreen. For best results all photos should have an effective resolution of 300 dots per inch. For best results, the image should be scanned at as high a resolution as needed, merely increasing the resolution in Photoshop or CorelDraw/Photopaint will not effectively increase the quality of a photograph when printed.

As a rule, it is best to size your photographs in Corel PhotoPaint, Photoshop, or a similar program, to approximately the size it will be reproduced. For example, having to reduce an image in Pagemaker to 10% is not a healthy sign. Similarly, blowing up photos in your page layout program is easy, too easy. If you have to enlarge a digital scan more than 125% beware that quality compromise is occurring. Starting out with images that are near their reproduction size reduces the amount of time needed to process your job and will highlight any images with inadequate resolution. Unless you purchased and downloaded a high resolution photo from a stock agency, there is not a image anywhere in cyberspace fit for four-color printing.

With the proliferation of photos on the web, the JPEG or .JPG photo compression scheme is gaining popularity. JPEG saves lots of room but actually throws away valuable data in the process. In the high-resolution world of print, this data loss translates into loss of image quality on a wholesale scale. Avoid any scan or photo that has JPEG in its pedigree and you'll side-step potential disappointment.

Imported (Placed) Graphics

Graphics from Illustrator or Freehand should be saved in the EPS format prior to placing them into your page layout program. In the event that you have mistakenly placed only a PICT or TIFF version, you will see some quality loss when you print out your page proofs. Also, it is helpful if you have checked the "split complex paths" box in Illustrator and set the output resolution at 2540 dpi in both Illustrator and Freehand. (be sure to "Save as..." after you have applied these settings as the resulting artwork may not be as easy to manipulate later). This will ensure that your job will print smoothly and look its very best.

One of the quickest ways to confuse an imagesetter is to place a graphic inside another graphic and then place that graphic in your page layout program. "Nesting" as it is called, results in delays and, sometimes, actual output errors. By avoiding nesting, potential problems have no where to roost.

Once you are sure that your graphics in Illustrator or Freehand are ready to go, consider applying the "Convert Text to Paths" or "Outline Text" option. By turning your text into artwork, no font embedding problems can occur and our imagesetter will sing your praises. Be sure to update your placed graphics once you have converted text to paths so the most recent versions will print trouble-free.

Application issues:

QuarkXPress: Picture boxes containing TIFF images must not have a background colour of "none". This automatic close-crop "feature" does not work properly. Lighter areas of the image will be cut off using the low-res screen preview as the "mask", resulting in unsightly jagged edges. Choose white (or some other colour) as the background colour. This forces the mask to extend to the edges of the picture box. If you want to close-crop an image properly, add a clipping path to it in Photoshop, save the file as an EPS and bring it back into your Quark document.

Corel Draw: Problematic filters include drop shadows and many of the bitmap "effect" filters.  If you will be creating a document containing more than one color, drop shadows work great ias long as you do not put them over another element (as they turn into cmyk instead of remaining greyscale).   If you need to edit bitmaps or create special effects use Adobe Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint. Save the results as a TIFF or EPS to be imported back into Corel Draw.

Adobe Illustrator: Avoid using filters and layers if you intend to have your files output correctly.