A Guide To Supplying Artwork
Contents:
Section 1 – Colour
Artwork supplied to Clear Sound & Vision should be in CMYK, Greyscale or use Pantone Colours. We will not accept artwork in any other colour mode.
We highly recommend that you approve a digital colour proof prior to printing, this in turn to be used by the printer/pressing plant to match to. Without this, the printer will run the job “to weight/to strength” (make a professional judgement on the outcome of the print) and this may not be how you envisaged the end result.
Please be aware of the amount of ink your artwork holds when trying to achieve dark colours/designs. For instance, if your CMYK artwork contains elements that use 90% Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black, far too much ink will be applied and there may be drying/saturation issues on press. We therefore ask that any element of your artwork must not contain more than 300% total coverage of the CMYK Plates.
*A good way to check colour percentages used on a PDF, is to apply the separation preview in acrobat professional. This will break down the colour values for you by use of an eyedropper tool over your artwork. This will also flag up any potential rogue/unwanted spot colours or Pantones used.
Section 2 – Quality/Resolution
Artwork supplied should hold a minimum resolution of 300dpi, any lower may result in pixilation or reduction in image quality.
All text supplied on artwork should ideally be supplied in “vectors”. Software packages such as Indesign, Quark, Illustrator or Freehand are all capable of producing high quality vectorized text. If for example you use Adobe Photoshop to lay out your text, you will be producing image based text, which in turn will be susceptible to pixel damage and will in turn produce a lower quality printed product.
Please note: any artwork supplied as a vector can disregard the dpi issue as a vector is set up differently from an image graphic and can never lose quality.
Section 3 – Templates
Please supply your artwork final artwork using the templates we provide or downloaded from our website. The following points will aid you in supplying artwork to us correctly:
a) The document size of our supplied template must no be altered in any way.
b) Please drop your artwork onto our template and not the other way around
c) Our templates dictate where “bleed” should be provided, limits of where text should sit, folds and where the printed image will trim. This is normally provided on a key in the top right. This may not evident on certain/specialized templates, please contact us for instruction if unclear.
d) The template itself must not be modified in anyway and a high resolution PDF should be output.
FAQ - templates.
Q: What if I do not use Quark.
A: Our templates come in both Quark and PDF format, So Quark or Indesign users can use the QuarkXpress file and any other uses will have no problems importing the PDF into their software.
Q: Why aren’t there any dimensions noted on the template?
A: If our template is used correctly you should have no need for sizes. Our templates have been created to scale (1:1 Ratio) so artwork can simply be dropped on and output to PDF.
Q: How do I stop the template from printing over my artwork?
A: By default, the template guides are set to suppress on output and so should disappear once your PDF is made.
Section 4 – Overprint & Knockout
Those that use Photoshop for all of their artwork may ignore this section as it will not apply.
If using Quark/Illustrator/Indesign or Freehand:
“Overprint”:
The only time overprint should come in to effect is when you overprint black text onto a lighter background, this ensures there are no registration or “fit” issues.
If your text/image is overprinting a lighter shade onto darker shade, this text/image may not be visible when printed.
“Knockout”:
This does the opposite to overprint. It knocks elements through the ink beneath it and prints onto the paper. Therefore white text knocking out to a black background will knock through and show the white of the paper/card, therefore making the text perfectly visible.
*A good way to check if any of your artwork is “overprinting” or “knocking out”, once you have made a PDF, is to open it in Acrobat Professional and use the “overprint preview” feature under the advanced tab.
Section 5 – Booklets
Please supply booklet artwork (unless instructed otherwise) in “printers pairs” ie.
12 & 1
2 & 11
10 & 7
8 & 9
6 & 7
Odd numbered pages sit on the right. If you use this rule, you can apply it to any sized booklet. Please also be aware that the centre pages should be the last pages on your document.
Section 6 – CD Onbodies
Please ensure your onbody artwork does not include a centre hole or stacking ring, we will grid this artwork accordingly and will supply a PDF for your approval.
Section 7 - Fonts
If the situation arises where you will need to supply CSV with native files, we will require all fonts that you have used too. If “TrueType” fonts are used, they generally come in two parts, a printer file and a screen file. In order for us to use your fonts successfully we will require you to supply both of these elements. Failure to supply one part of the font, can result in font corruption/bitmapping or complete font replacement to something standard such as courier.
Please also ensure that you embed any fonts into your document when supplying PDF files.
Please contact Simon Johns or Jo Cole in our Reprographics Department should you have any questions on 020 8989 8777.
Contents:
Section 1 – Colour
Artwork supplied to Clear Sound & Vision should be in CMYK, Greyscale or use Pantone Colours. We will not accept artwork in any other colour mode.
We highly recommend that you approve a digital colour proof prior to printing, this in turn to be used by the printer/pressing plant to match to. Without this, the printer will run the job “to weight/to strength” (make a professional judgement on the outcome of the print) and this may not be how you envisaged the end result.
Please be aware of the amount of ink your artwork holds when trying to achieve dark colours/designs. For instance, if your CMYK artwork contains elements that use 90% Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black, far too much ink will be applied and there may be drying/saturation issues on press. We therefore ask that any element of your artwork must not contain more than 300% total coverage of the CMYK Plates.
*A good way to check colour percentages used on a PDF, is to apply the separation preview in acrobat professional. This will break down the colour values for you by use of an eyedropper tool over your artwork. This will also flag up any potential rogue/unwanted spot colours or Pantones used.
Section 2 – Quality/Resolution
Artwork supplied should hold a minimum resolution of 300dpi, any lower may result in pixilation or reduction in image quality.
All text supplied on artwork should ideally be supplied in “vectors”. Software packages such as Indesign, Quark, Illustrator or Freehand are all capable of producing high quality vectorized text. If for example you use Adobe Photoshop to lay out your text, you will be producing image based text, which in turn will be susceptible to pixel damage and will in turn produce a lower quality printed product.
Please note: any artwork supplied as a vector can disregard the dpi issue as a vector is set up differently from an image graphic and can never lose quality.
Section 3 – Templates
Please supply your artwork final artwork using the templates we provide or downloaded from our website. The following points will aid you in supplying artwork to us correctly:
a) The document size of our supplied template must no be altered in any way.
b) Please drop your artwork onto our template and not the other way around
c) Our templates dictate where “bleed” should be provided, limits of where text should sit, folds and where the printed image will trim. This is normally provided on a key in the top right. This may not evident on certain/specialized templates, please contact us for instruction if unclear.
d) The template itself must not be modified in anyway and a high resolution PDF should be output.
FAQ - templates.
Q: What if I do not use Quark.
A: Our templates come in both Quark and PDF format, So Quark or Indesign users can use the QuarkXpress file and any other uses will have no problems importing the PDF into their software.
Q: Why aren’t there any dimensions noted on the template?
A: If our template is used correctly you should have no need for sizes. Our templates have been created to scale (1:1 Ratio) so artwork can simply be dropped on and output to PDF.
Q: How do I stop the template from printing over my artwork?
A: By default, the template guides are set to suppress on output and so should disappear once your PDF is made.
Section 4 – Overprint & Knockout
Those that use Photoshop for all of their artwork may ignore this section as it will not apply.
If using Quark/Illustrator/Indesign or Freehand:
“Overprint”:
The only time overprint should come in to effect is when you overprint black text onto a lighter background, this ensures there are no registration or “fit” issues.
If your text/image is overprinting a lighter shade onto darker shade, this text/image may not be visible when printed.
“Knockout”:
This does the opposite to overprint. It knocks elements through the ink beneath it and prints onto the paper. Therefore white text knocking out to a black background will knock through and show the white of the paper/card, therefore making the text perfectly visible.
*A good way to check if any of your artwork is “overprinting” or “knocking out”, once you have made a PDF, is to open it in Acrobat Professional and use the “overprint preview” feature under the advanced tab.
Section 5 – Booklets
Please supply booklet artwork (unless instructed otherwise) in “printers pairs” ie.
12 & 1
2 & 11
10 & 7
8 & 9
6 & 7
Odd numbered pages sit on the right. If you use this rule, you can apply it to any sized booklet. Please also be aware that the centre pages should be the last pages on your document.
Section 6 – CD Onbodies
Please ensure your onbody artwork does not include a centre hole or stacking ring, we will grid this artwork accordingly and will supply a PDF for your approval.
Section 7 - Fonts
If the situation arises where you will need to supply CSV with native files, we will require all fonts that you have used too. If “TrueType” fonts are used, they generally come in two parts, a printer file and a screen file. In order for us to use your fonts successfully we will require you to supply both of these elements. Failure to supply one part of the font, can result in font corruption/bitmapping or complete font replacement to something standard such as courier.
Please also ensure that you embed any fonts into your document when supplying PDF files.
Please contact Simon Johns or Jo Cole in our Reprographics Department should you have any questions on 020 8989 8777.