PRINT SPECIFICATION
We’ve created some guidelines to help you if you plan on creating your own artwork or want to submit your artwork for us to manage the print.
We hope you find the guidelines useful.
CMYK
CMYK represents the four colour printing process (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). It is important you design your documents in a CMYK. When you are setting up your document for printing, always select CMYK as the colour mode.
We use CMYK Process Colour, therefore all Pantone Spot colours should be converted to their CMYK equivalent before your file is sent to us.
Bleed
When designing for print you must ensure that you create your artwork in the correct format which includes a 3mm bleed on each edge (sometimes 5mm or more).
Bleed refers to the extension of any blocks of graphics or colour that you want to run past the edge of the cut sheet.
Using a safe area
Avoid placing text close to the trim or cut edge of your artwork. Allow a safe area or quiet space between your text and the edge. The amount of space that you leave will depend on the size of your printed documents.
As a guide 5-10mm is advisable in many cases.
Resolution – 300dpi
If you are creating your artwork in software like Adobe Photoshop we require an absolute minimum of 300dpi, you can send 450dpi or even 600dpi if you prefer, the later two sizes dramatically increase the file size of your document. As a general rule 300dpi is adequate.
To ensure a crisp print on items such as text we strongly recommend creating all artwork in software like Adobe Illustrator or Adobe In-Design, these applications output text as “Postscript” data which means the text information will print out crystal clear.
We recommend that you convert all text to outlines before printing.
You can export PDFs from Photoshop, but please check that text layers have been preserved and fonts are embeded.
Save as a pdf
To get the best results we highly recommend submitting your printing in PDF format.
The advantage of saving as PDF is text can be preserved as text layers, this will result in a much higher quality finish than flattened text which you may find in JPEG.
To preview how your print will be appear when it is printed, we would recommend selecting Overprint Preview. This should identify any vector objects that have Overprint applied to the them.
Black
Thing’s aren’t always as simple as black and white!
If you are using large areas of black in your artwork eg. a black background – we recommend setting your black as C 30%, Y 0%, M 0%, K 100% instead of just K 100%. On screen this colour will look slightly blue but in print it will appear black. This is called a rich black. Other Rich Black variations can also be used.
Spot UV
Spot UV is a clear glossy coating that can be applied to printed documents. It works particularly well when applied on top of a matt laminate.
Supply the print PDF file as normal (as indicated above) and also supply a 2nd PDF with the spot UV in position. Ensure that the spot UV exactly lines up with the first PDF if you want the spot UV to match up with any text or graphics.
The Spot UV file should be 100% black.
