File Formatting | File Cutting | Common Printing Terms | InDesign Templates
File Formatting
Resolution
A resolution of at least 300 pixels per inch will give your project the best looking images, and will preserve a high quality finished product.
Format
PDF format The most efficient file format file type we recommend is PDF, or source files (including Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator) but we also accept high resolution JPG’s as well as EPS files.
Colors
Please send files in either 4 color CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) and/or Pantone colors or grayscale.
Sending Files
Sending files can be done through Citrix ShareFile, Kodak Insite or by contacting one of our Customer Services Reps and or filling out our quote form.
File Cutting
Bleeds
If your document has images cropped off the page they will need to extend beyond the document boundries. This enables us to have a little wiggle room when cutting the piece, without the chance of leaving white edges on the product.
Dead Cut
If there aren’t any images that extend outside of the document then we can impose your products side by side and cut them down the middle. Typically this product will have a white or solid background.
Trim
The trim is where the product will be cut to size. A bleed will extend past this line, and a dead cut product will have all the information within this line.
Safe Work Area
This is the area within the document that is safe to work, away from the trim line. This area typically starts at least .125” from the trim line to ensure no information gets cut off.
Common Printing Terms
A printed image that extends beyond one or more of the finished page margins and is later trimmed so that the image "bleeds" off the edge of the sheet.
The gradual extension of the inner signatures of a book block beyond the edges of the signatures that surround them, resulting in inner signatures having a progressively smaller trim size. Shingling is one means of compensating for creep. Creep is also known as binder's creep, pushout, and thrust, and is commonly an issue only in publications that are bound by saddle-stitching.
A water-based sealant applied by an inking unit of the press or a special coater tower. Aqueous coating is available in matte, dull, satin, and gloss and provides better rub protection than varnish.
In binding and finishing, a means of binding utilizing an adhesive to hold pages together. Perfect binding, also known as adhesive binding, applies an adhesive to the spine of gathered pages which, when dry, keeps them securely bound. Commonly, a soft paper or paperboard cover (or paperback) is attached over the binding adhesive. Perfect bound publications have rectangular backbones. Publications bound by perfect binding include paperback books, telephone books, catalogs, and magazines. (About 40% of national magazines are perfect bound.)
A printing press that allows the simultaneous printing on both sides of a sheet of paper in one pass through the press. In a convertible perfector, special transfer cylinders between successive printing units flip the paper over after it leaves the first impression cylinder, allowing the second unit to print on the reverse side of the sheet. Such presses have the advantage of being able to be used for single-side multi-color printing, simply by adjusting the transfer cylinders to keep them from flipping the sheet over.
The printing of "full color" images utilizing a photographic color separation process in which each of three primary colors—cyan, magenta, and yellow, plus black—are separated from the original art and given their own printing plate. Successive runs through the press or multiple printing units lay down inks of each of these colors in combinations that allow for the reproduction of many colors of the spectrum.
A means of binding pages together by driving staples though the centerfold of a signature or group of signatures. Many magazines and newsletters are bound by saddle-stitching—such as Time, Newsweek, Natural History, and many others.
In printing and publishing, any single press sheet on which multiple pages have been imposed which, when folded and cut, forms a group of pages. Most books and other publications are printed as groups of signatures, the multiple imposition allowing a significant reduction in the number of independent pressruns required to print all pages.
Spot color commonly uses different types of ink. Spot color inks, when not consisting of primary colors, are usually mixed prior to printing, and are specified by the use of color matching systems, such as the PANTONE Matching System (PMS).
