Important, helpful stuff...
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We support the following applications: MAC/PC InDesign CS3, Illustrator CS3, Photoshop CS3, Acrobat If you have other file formats, we may be able to handle them, too. Just ask!

Fonts : A common delay with supplied artwork files is missing fonts. Be sure to include ALL fonts when saving the files to disk. Send all printer and screen fonts, or True Type fonts. Include all styles used -- regular, bold, italic and bold italic, and be sure to keep a backup of all files that you send to us.

Bleeds : Set your document size to the exact size of your finished piece. If your design includes images or colour fills that extend to the edge of your final printed piece, you must create bleeds. Make sure your images or colour fills extend at least 3mm past the page edge. For non-bleed jobs, please allow 3mm clear space from the edge on all sides.

Colour Images : Be sure to include all native and imported files. All images must be either: .eps, .tiff, .pdf or .jpeg files. You should scan your images using a resolution of 300dpi at the final dimensions you intend to use them so that your colours will look smooth, and hard objects will look sharp. In other words dont scan at 300dpi and then enlarge the picture by 200% in your layout program! Low-resolution images taken from the internet are not recommended. They are probably only 72dpi in resolution and will look very blurry if printed on a printing press.

Full Colour Printing : We print 4 process (CMYK) colours. Scanners and digital cameras create images using combinations of just three colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB).

These are the colours that computers use to display images on your screen. But printing presses print full colour pictures using a different set of colours: Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black (called CMYK). At some point, your RGB file must be converted to CMYK in order to print it on a printing press. This is easily done using most image editing programs (like PhotoShop).

Important : Its best if you do the RGB-to-CMYK conversion of your images. You will have more control over the appearance of your printed piece if you convert all of the images from RGB to CMYK before sending them to us. When we receive RGB images, we do a standard-value conversion to CMYK, which may not be perfectly to your liking. We want you to be happy, so please, take the time to prepare your file properly. We cannot be responsible for sub-par results if you furnish low-res images or RGB images.

Other Tips : Any heavy black ink coverage must be set up as true black, sometimes called Rich Black (C70, M60, Y40, K100). Be sure all colours used in your document and your graphic files are set to CMYK values for proper separation.

Preflight your project to make sure all elements are available for collection. Collect all fonts and art elements used on your project into one folder. This will be the folder you supply us for reproduction. Its always good to close out your document and then reopen it from the file collected for reproduction, just to be sure the document opens without difficulty. Also, print out separations to supply as a reference along with your digital file.