Help with your art work

•Page at a time
When sending several pages of a brochure, please send them as separate pages.
Also, whilst 3mm of bleed is important we don't need crop marks. (we add our own)

•Paper sizes
Please check the linked page for comprehensive information on paper sizes.

•Sending a digital file
We accept most file types but prefer PDFs. (However, even these aren't idiot proof!). At the end of the day you can only be fairly sure that your work is going to turn out as you expect it, when it has been printed!
We accept Publisher, Word, Works, Serif, Corel Draw, InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator files. The Publisher files are prone to print wrongly: graphics change and if your fonts aren't on our computer, everything will be reformatted, using a substitute font. Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator files are often not forward compatible and so might not work in our versions. (We have Adobe suite up to CS5.5)
Customers files are often very big and your internet provider might block them. Try compacting them and sending them. Even better use our free Send a file feature.
Some customers send using a CD, others use pen drives and, occasionally, their ipods and mobile phones.

•Creating pdfs
To create a pdf for sending to a print shop:
Later Microsoft products are able to save as a pdf (or their competing format). Also a free utility is available at www.bullzip.com; When installed, this utility behaves like an extra printer. The main setting allows you to choose the quality of the final file. A print shop will require the prepress version.

•Bleed
If you want your printing to have the professional look, without a white border, you have to introduce 'bleed' into your design. The printer prints onto over-sized paper and then cuts it down to the finished size. The paper will be prone to move during this process and so keep text, and graphics that will look wrong if cropped, away from the edge. An ink machine can usually manage with an extra 3mm at the edges but leave more to be sure. A digital printing machine usually has poor registration and the difference over a print run might be up to 5mm. This is why the illustration shows 5mm of bleed. A mass production printer will be very precise about the amount of bleed required because their printing software will be set up with a pre-set amount of bleed. Changing your art work to fit will take them too much time. They will reject your art work and it will have to be re-set by yourself or your designer in your software. We will gladly do this for you at a nominal charge. Please let us know their specification, usually available on their help pages.
We can print your design using a white border; this saves the trouble of having to reset your design.