Preparing Your Files for Printing

In these days everything happens really fast. Production processes are optimized in the most efficient and fast ways. We are consuming quickly, and each passing day technology keeps up with this fast lifestyle in the world. In this concept, quick delivery is one of the reasons why digital printing is preferred. To ensure that the fast process continues and avoids delays it is important that files which are sent for printing are ready to print. In this post, you will see the important tips for the files you are sending to print.

First of all, you should keep in mind that open file formats are not accepted for printing. Open file format is, for example, a file of Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop. The most preferred file format for printing is PDF because it is not an open file format and also it can include more than 1 page. Other than PDF, JPEG and TIFF formats are also accepted.

The file format is the first most important thing that a person should pay attention to. But also for those file formats, the resolution is a factor that directly affects the quality of the printed product. Especially when the format is JPEG or TIFF, the resolution should be high enough. Otherwise, images will be pixelated or blurred when printed. We recommend for the resolution to be at least 300 dpi(dots per inch).

There are some colour spaces that colours are created. Colour space is the mathematical model where the range of colours is described. When it comes to printing, we talk about 2 colour spaces which are RGB and CMYK format. RGB is red-green-blue and CMYK is cyan-magenta-yellow-key(black). In our concept what we consider is the output. If the created work of art is going to be demonstrated on digital platforms RGB is the colour space that should be chosen. If the work is going to be printed, then CMYK is the space that the designer should work with.

When we consider the contents of the print-ready files, fonts are one of the reasons why open file formats are not accepted. Printers cannot have all the font combinations. Hence, PostScript fonts can be embedded into the PDF files or those fonts can be converted to paths like vectors and convert curves.

Since printers are mechanical devices, they all have some tolerances. To be safe, a graphic designer should add bleeds to all the edges of the design. Bleed is if the design has a background, the size of that background should be bigger than the final size. Bleeds should be given at least 3 mm from all edges. Another essentiality for a print-ready file is crop marks. It is used for visual control after printing and also for cutting. Crop marks indicate the positions where the product is going to be cut from. So it shows the size of the product.

Trim area also must not include important work because of the tolerance of the trimming machine.

Safe printing area is at least 3mm inside from the edges of the product. Graphic designer should not locate logos or texts that must be shown on the product in safe area because it is the safe place created for if the cut was not precise enough or if there is a shrinkage occurs.

In Step Dijital all these controls are made by our graphic design department for the works that our customers send. Problems are detected, if there is any, and our customers are guided through their work.

These were the basic measures that a designer should take for preparing a file for printing. Hope this helps. You can get in touch with our graphic design department if you have any further questions when you are sending your files to us.