Artwork

Examining artwork in detail helps to avoid unexpected results

We hope this simple guide will point you in the right direction so that the PDF files you provide to us give us the predictable results we’re all looking for.

Working Together
We all share the same goal: we want an end product we can be proud of which can be managed and produced with the minimum of fuss and which will come in on time and on budget.

All this begins with the supply of the right kind of file. As much as you rely on us to produce the publication to your requirements, we rely on concise instructions and correctly formatted artwork from you.

Happy to Help
Above all, we want to make sure that you get the result you want when you see your finished product. If you would like to discuss any aspect of the supply of your work, our studio team are always happy to help on 01727 733260.

What if I can’t?
There will always be ‘one-off’ situations where things aren’t exactly as they should be. We understand that. We just hope to explain what the ideal method of supply is so that we avoid unnecessary delays and additional cost.

Applications
Pass4press deals with Adobe InDesign, QuarkXpress and Adobe Acrobat. If you are using any other application to generate your PDF files, it is vital that you supply us with test files ahead of your live job so that we can flag any potential problems. In short – there are no guarantees with files which do not conform to the standard so additional vigilance is a must.

Application Files
This term is often used to describe the software utilised in creating artwork for example ‘Illustrator’, ‘Photoshop’, ‘InDesign’ or ‘QuarkXpress’. Whilst all these applications are great for creative purposes, they are not best suited to sending the finished product to press. Thus, we base our costs on receiving the most effective technique which is PDF, or portable document format. We may use application files for troubleshooting a problem or ask for them to help you with creating documents, but as live artwork, they are more expensive and unpredictable to process so we will always request PDF files.

Blank pages
Unless you intend pages to be blank in the finished job, please don’t leave them in the document. It sometimes happens that we receive an editorial document with a blank page waiting for an ad, but the ad is supplied as a separate PDF file. We may not spot this until the internal proof has been produce, so extra time and cost may well result.

Bleed
Bleed is the extended image area which appears outside of the trim on the PDF file. We need it so that if there is any slight over trimming on your product, no white ‘whiskers’ will show.
3mm please. All round.

Box Clever
In Adobe Acrobat under preferences, select, page display and under Page Content and Information, check the Show art, trim & bleed boxes box. The Boxes will now show every time you open a compliant PDF file. See also ‘Trim Box’ and ‘Media Box’.

Colour Spaces
Where your product is to be printed using CMYK, we will set our prepress system to automatically convert spot colours into their process equivalent. If you wish us to flag and query spot colours, please let us know.

Cheat Codes
We can recommend a little extra tweaking of the pass4press settings which will save significant upload time if you’re on a slow internet connection. In Acrobat Distiller, on the images tab, select down sampling to 300 dpi for images above 300 dpi and select automatic compression with Image Quality at High. Do this on both Colour and Grayscale Images. Similarly, for Monochrome Images, select Bicubic downsampling to 1200 dpi for all images above 2400 dpi. In doing this, your file size will be significantly reduced.

Critical Matter
This refers to text and its proximity to the trim margin. All text for reasons to do with trim variation and binding margins should be at least 10mm clear of the trim edge.

Embedded Profiles
As with RGB and spot colours, we receive a large number of files containing all kinds of obscure profiles which would produce unpredictable results. To deal with this, we have set our system to automatically discard any profiles supplied which gives a consistent result. If you especially need us to response a profile which has been embedded in your PDF files, you must inform us.

Fonts
Fonts must be embedded, meaning they are supplied as part of the document they populate. If they are not and substitute fonts are used, the appearance of the document could change dramatically. If fonts are not embedded, we cannot proceed with your project and will contact you to find a solution.

Halftone/Bitmap Graphics
These images have a specific resolution in their original form and sub-standard quality will result if they are enlarged beyond reasonable limits.

Media Box
A postscript tag which describes the area of the full document including the white around the image. Thus, a correctly supplied PDF file will be 297mm x 210mm at the trim box, 313mm x 216mm at the bleed box and 317mm x 230mm at the media box.

Don’t PDF a PDF
When a PDF is created, compression is used. If this PDF is placed in a picture box and converted again, a further ‘dose’ of compression is applied. The second dose can have dramatically unpredictable results. The only way to be sure that your PDF is of suitable quality is not to place PDF ads as images in picture boxes. You should open them in Acrobat, save as an eps file and place the eps instead. That way, your ingredient file is decompressed and the results will be predictable.

PDF Files & Photoshop
If you’re looking to decompress or convert a PDF file, don’t use Photoshop until you’ve tried through Acrobat. Photoshop rasterises the fonts & vectors which can cause them to appear ‘fuzzy’ compared with the original.

Page Geometry
Please ensure your pages are all the same size. Variations will lead to unpredictable output where crop marks could appear, critical matter could trim off and other potential problems.

Picture Format
EPS files tend to process better than TIFF files due to their postscript ‘breeding’. They also support vector graphics and embedded fonts so it’s best to work with these as you make up your document.

Preflight
Helpful as we try to be, if we spot issues with your artwork at our factory, it could cost you valuable time and money to correct. If you spot it at your office, you’ll be spared the drama. Acrobat Professional incorporates all the functionality you’ll need and if you ask, we’ll be happy to help you set it up.

RGB vs CMYK
A large amount of content passes through our hands with RGB values. If you use our Portal system, you will be automatically alerted to this and will need to OK this before proceeding. We do convert RGB to CMYK in the latter stages of our workflow but it is important to note that on occasions, this ‘on the fly’ conversion can produce unpredictably coloured results. The best policy is to go for CMYK from the beginning.

RIP
Prepress is all about converting the language of layout into the language of plates. Layout is all kinds of source images; the end result is a flat bitmap file. What lies in between is the RIP or Raster Image Processor. If the RIP gets good input, we all get predictable output. Or, to put it another way, rubbish in, rubbish out.

Reader’s or Designer’s Pairs?
Please, neither. All we need are the pages supplied as singles. When the pages are ‘joined’ together to create spreads, we have to take them apart to impose them ready for press, which costs time and money.

Resolution – a Blurred Issue
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and this is no less applicable in the matter of image resolution. The ideals are that linework should be 1200dpi and halftone images 300 dpi, but this is rarely achieved across an entire publication. As a practical measure, we flag anything below 120dpi on our input systems. If you have any concerns regarding images between 120 and 300 dpi, you need to advise us so that we can tweak our preparation procedure accordingly. Extra charges may apply. The most effective way to tackle these issues is to preflight before you upload to us.

Say what we’ll see
If your editorial article from page 10 to 13 contains a full page ad supplied separately on page 12, please supply as ‘010_011.pdf’ then ‘013.pdf’, not ‘010_013.pdf’ containing a blank page.

Proofing Portal
We’re open for upload and approval 24-7. You can upload PDF files and see your proofs, both High and Low Resolution on screen in minutes via our web browser based Proofing Portal solution. You’ll need to register with us to get your own login ID but we can get you up and running in minutes. All you need is an up to date browser with the latest version of Java installed. More info at www.mansongroup.co.uk/clients

Single Page Documents
No need. Unless you have an especially high powered computer, it’s not a good idea to convert an entire 200 pager of full colour pics to PDF at once either, but an ideal practice would be to create documents ion 16s which coincide with the imposition. There’s enough groupage to reduce mouse clicks but not so much as to haemorrhage your system.

Standards & Settings
We have set up our prepress systems to comply with the widely accepted pass4press standard which is a derivative of the PDF x1/a standard. The application settings for this standard can be found here http://www.ppa.co.uk/resources/guides-and-standards/production/pass4press/

Trapping
This describes the relationship between two or more co-existing layers. It was originally created to apply ‘bite’ into a strong colour from an overlapping weak colour to avoid ‘fringing’ if printed slightly out of register. However, it is often used when objects do not appear as intended within a document. Most commonly, white objects on a coloured background set to overprint may appear correctly in screen applications, but may disappear when RIP’ed. To check this, you should ensure in Adobe applications that overprint preview is switched on. To correct issues, you may need to alter trapping properties from overprint to knockout.

Trim Box
This is a visible tag within Acrobat (part of the postscript language) which shows our prepress system where the boundaries of your artwork are. It is beneficial because often ad copy supplied will use differing, even off-centre margins to in house editorial. If the respective pages were imposed from the edge of the document, the results would be disastrous, but if they both contain the correctly size trim box, our system ‘homes in’ on the correct part of the document. It's easy to check your PDF files before upload. In Acrobat Preferences, go to Page Display and under Page Content and Information check Show art, trim & bleed boxes

Vector Graphics
These components are usually created in Adobe Illustrator, but are not exclusively. They describe an image by means of coordinates, lines and curves and are as a result, scalable to huge dimensions without encountering quality issues. They are the digital equivalent of the old ‘linework’ but may additionally incorporate shading/blending.

You called me what?
When we process your files, we don’t open and read each page individually. Therefore, it is vitally important your file names show us clearly what’s inside. So for Project Engineer page 12, name the file 012_projeng. The zero means when the pages are in our queue, they display in the correct order just as they would on a computer drive.

£*&^$!
Please don’t use unusual characters to separate strings of text on your file names. They crash in queues on our servers. The only recommended separator is under_.

a printable version of this guide is downloadable in PDF here

For more information and support, call our team on 01727 848440
Visit
www.mansongroup.co.uk
or email
enquiries@mansongroup.co.uk