Guidelines and tips for great print.

Contrary to popular belief, getting a document professionally printed is not as easy as clicking print. So we’ve set up some guidelines to help.

Setting up a file to print correctly is a complicated process, and if you haven’t done it before there’s a lot you need to know. Without correct set-up, a printer will ‘bounce’ your job back to you for you to fix, wasting your time, or will charge you.through the nose for them to fix, wasting your money. But if you follow these guidelines before you start designing, your print job should go through smoothly.

Of course, if you get halfway through this document and start to panic, don’t worry. You can arrange to have us sort this all out for you at a competitive rate – and we’ll throw in our great design and marketing expertise as well.

We’ve been doing this for years, so we know what works.

 

WE WILL

• Check your document for technical errors.
• Send it back to you to fix if there is an issue.
• Try to fix the issue for you if you choose at a charge (we will let you know what this is beforehand).
• Verify your file will print correctly.

WE WON’T

• Check your document for spelling, grammar or inaccuracies.
• Check your document for missing images or text.
• Send your document to print without advising you of technical errors.
• Provide you with a proof – so ensure you check your document carefully before sending to us.

ABOUT COLOUR

Using Colour Profiles

There are several different ways of setting colour in your artwork, and it’s crucial that the correct profile is used.

RGB

Your computer, scanner and camera uses what is called an RGB (Red Green Blue) colour profile.

There is a much wider spectrum of colours that can be viewed on a screen than printed using standard inks, so your images need to be converted before printing to what is called CMYK.

CMYK

Printing presses use a colour profile called CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) – sometimes referred to as process colour.

Basically, at some stage, any RGB images need to be converted to CMYK. This can be easily done using Photoshop prior to printing; however, if you don’t perform the conversion yourself, when we print your file we’ll apply a standard conversion, meaning you may get unexpected results or colours may look washed out.

If you don’t have Photoshop, there are freeware apps available online that can do the job – Gimp is one example.

BLACK

This may be surprising, but black is not always the best black.

While small areas of black such as text or logos should be created only in black in, a combination of 100% black and 40% cyan is best for larger black areas.

One thing to watch out for…

When placing an image with a black background into a black document, the blacks may look the same on screen, but will print as a black box unless they are matched perfectly.

SPOT OR PANTONE

Spot colours, also known as Pantone colours, are inks used by printers to get a very specific colour.

They are mixed like paint and used one at a time. Generally, you do not want to be using spot colours unless you’ve discussed it with your printer first, as the appearance of spot colours in your job will generate an extra colour plate at additional cost.

You can check your document by printing separations – check your application help file for instructions on how this works. If you get anything other than a cyan, magenta, yellow and black separation print, you have extra colours in your document that you need to convert.

Sometimes an RGB or spot colour has no direct CMYK equivalent – especially if you’ve got very bright or fluorescent colours. When you convert them, your software will choose the closest possible colour, but colours can come out quite different from what you were expecting.

Be aware also that colours on screen appear brighter and stronger than when printed – it always pays to run off a laser print to check how they’re looking, especially when it comes to tints.