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PREFLIGHT & PREPRESS CHECKLISTS : PREPARING DIGITAL FILES FOR PRESS & PRINTERS

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Preparing Artwork and Documents for the Printers - Love it or hate it, you just can’t escape printed materials, especially if you are a graphic designer.

A No Surprise Checklist - To help prevent costly errors and dissatisfaction with the end result it is important to ask yourself some questions at the onset of the job. Here are a few tips.

Graphic Designers from our Community

Beginning with the End - Where does a typical desktop publishing project begin? Dumb question? Perhaps not. For all practical purposes, the information gathering process starts at the end, with the printing process. If you're new to desktop publishing, this article will explain some of the technical aspects of design you may not have considered. If you're an old pro, it might remind you of some of the production steps we (I include myself here) sometimes forget.

Checklist to Success - Prevention is better than cure, and nowhere more so than in desktop publishing. Learn to preflight your design documents before they cause trouble down at the bureau or presses.

Printing Checklist - Printing is a complex, highly technical process that must be carefully planned and executed to get the desired results. Many things can go wrong, and even small problems can cause delays and cost overruns.

Design Guide For Print : Submitting Files For Print - We've learned that by streamlining the prepress process we are able to pass significant savings onto our customers. Our prepress guidelines also let us bypass common pitfalls associated with preparing digital artwork for print such as embedding fonts, and unlinked images.

Environmentally Preferrable Printing Checklist - Some organizations develop simple checklists to assist purchasers in designing environmentally preferable print jobs. These checklists help organizations save money, reduce waste and protect the environment. A copy-ready checklist has been provided for you to use as is, or modify to fit your organization's needs.

Free Digital File Preflight Test - Here are some of the file errors that commercial printers look for when you send them a file...it is good for you, the graphic designer, to know what to look for so you can save on any extra costs.

Graphic Design and Digital Prepress - Top 10 Do's (& Don'ts)

Preflight Checklist - Avoid Printing Delays With This Preflight Checklist - Not all items on this example preflight checklist are required for every job or every printer.However, failure to include all items required by your service provider or failure to properly prepare digital files or camera ready artwork can result in both time delays and create addtional costs.

Preparing for Successful Print - Ensuring your commercial print is successful

Preflight Checklist - In order to ensure successful output of the files you send us we suggest that you use this preflight checklist before submission. Although we run a preflight check when we receive your files, by conducting your own preflight check before submission you can avoid delays associated with missing graphical elements or improperly formatted disks or pages.

Pre-Print Checklist - Inspect all the sheets you mean to print to be sure everything is finished. Are all the calculations there? Is the formatting of cells complete? Are all explanations and comments in place, especially what you meant to have visible on the sheet(s).

Preparing Digital Prepress Files - Look at the bottom of this page for guidelines to preparing your digital prepress files. Thorough preparation of your files using the guidelines below will best insure that your files RIP as intended.

Preparing a Digital File To Print? - We know preparing your file to print is a time consuming process. We at Copy King want to ensure that your document gets produced as quickly as possible. Consequently, we’ve put together some helpful information you can use when preparing your files. Following these guidelines will help you avoid additional charges, time delays and frustration.

Submitting Your Print or Copy Job Checklist - In addition to deciding the quantity, paper stock, ink colors and finishing for your project, you should know the following information in order to ensure the quickest turn around time for your request. A Renaissance Printing representative will be glad to assist you in determining the following.

Preparing Files for Electronic Pre-Press and Imaging - Some things that should be done to minimize problems at imaging are the same, regardless of the platform and application

Prepress Checklist (PDF)- Get a Digital Press Checklist to ensure you prepare your files properly for our presses.

Sending Files to Your Service Bureau or Printer - When you send a digital file out for film or printing more goes along than just your PageMaker or QuarkXPress document. Describes what you would normally send to your service provider.

Sending Fonts to Your Service Bureau or Printer - Service bureaus cite the number one problem when outputting files is the fonts. The receive files with missing fonts, corrupt fonts, or the wrong fonts. If you want to avoid delays and errors on your next project, take the extra steps to ensure that you send the right fonts with your file.

Sending Graphics to Your Service Bureau or Printer - There are dozens of graphics file formats but only two -- EPS and TIFF are the standards for commercial high resolution printing. Beyond file type other graphics issues that can jeopardize your printing project are color, compression, complexity, and completely missing images.

Submitting Art / Art Specs Tutorial - Welcome to the MorphiusDisc Mfg tutorial, which should help you get started on the right foot preparing your project for manufacturing. This tutorial is designed to help you avoid costly errors and production snags that could delay your projects completion, and it should help to ensure that your finished products are of the highest possible quality.

Tips and Checklist DTP Page layout software - Page layout programs allow the user to open a template file, import images and text, select from a variety of type fonts and sizes, column justifications, document formatting, and image linking. Page layout programs enable designers to produce professional quality results inexpensively and quickly without the need for outside typesetting or assistance.

Tips On Getting Your Electronic Files Output The Way You Actually Intended - This collection is a compilation of tips from many sources. As a sales rep for a commercial printer (Altman Printing Company), I have personally experienced most of these situations. If I had had something like this to give to each of my clients in the beginning, it sure would have made everyone's life a little easier!! Some of the tips below should be added to the back of your DTP Bible

Tips For Desktop Publishing - Tips For Desktop Publishing

A Preflight Checklist - To help prevent costly errors and dissatisfaction with the end result it is important to ask yourself some questions at the onset of the job.

Avoid Printing and Finishing Delays With a Preflight Checklist - Failure to include all items required by your service provider or failure to properly prepare digital files or camera ready artwork can result in both time delays and create addtiional costs. Use of a comprehensive preflight checklist can save time, money, and frustration.

Basic Planning of Your Design for Commercial Printing - For most graphic designers there is an enormous sense of achievement to be had from seeing your creative efforts finished and in print. After 16 years I still get a thrill from seeing a printed version of my screen creations.

Ensuring your commercial print is successful - Tom Arah begins a two part look at producing commercial print by investigating how to successfully get your publication to your outputting bureau.

Beginning With The End - Prepress - Where does a typical desktop publishing project begin? Dumb question? Perhaps not. For all practical purposes, the information gathering process starts at the end, with the printing process.

Files to Press Preparing DTP files for commercial printing--beginner to advanced

Design Guide For Print - Submitting Files For Print - We've learned that by streamlining the prepress process we are able to pass significant savings onto our customers. Our prepress guidelines also let us bypass common pitfalls associated with preparing digital artwork for print such as embedding fonts, and unlinked images.

Getting Better Customer Files - This article is for prepress organizations, but it can benefit you, the designer, as well. You have to hand it to technology. While advancements such as FTP, e-mail and other file-transfer methods have streamlined print production and made it easier for printers to receive job orders from customers, they have also introduced a new problem to the production process: customer-created files.

Image File Checklist - How to avoid interrupted print jobs.

Julian Fosters Printing Tips DO's & DON'Ts On Sending Files To A Printer / Service Bureau For Output

Pearls of Output-File Wisdom - Here are some pearls of file output wisdom I have collected over the years from my friends that ride imagesetters everyday.

PrePress Magic - Colour Print - Full colour printing is an illusion built on an illusion. Tom Arah looks at the tricks involved.

Printing Basics - It is important to understand the basics of the printing process to insure that your packaging looks like what you designed it to look like.

Printing-101.com - A guide to color printing and working with printers effectively.

Preflight Your Files - Tight budgets and deadlines are a fact of life in the printing business, so it's a given that the production process must flow as smoothly as possible. And in today's digital workflow, optimized as it is for speed and efficiency, one has to be particularly careful to avoid setbacks.

Questions on Preflighting - Questions on preflighting RIP digital output image trap trapping and more

Sending Jobs to Press - Other than the printing specifications, what should you send your printer once the final corrections have been made to your print job?

Sending Files to Your Service Bureau - Getting files, fonts, graphics, disks ready for commercial printing

Solving Digital File Problems - Solving Digital File Problems before you bring your files to the Service Bureau...including trapping.

Tips on Fonts and Service Bureaus

Tips and Tricks to Provide Your Files to Printing Bureaus - Explains about different specific software files such as , Quark, PhotoShop, Illustrator, PageMaker, Freehand, and Corel Draw to press

What is Flexography Printing? - Like letterpress printing before it, flexography works on the principal of raised items on a plate catching ink and then touching the paper to make the printed impression. As the name suggests, the plates are made from flexible materials like rubber and can conform to uneven surfaces. Typically, only spot colors are used with this process.

What Should I Ask My Prospective Printer? - When you start a project that will be printed, it's best to find a few printers to discuss the project with. You can ask associates, a business group or your designer for recommendations. It's a good idea to communicate with the printer to get a feel for who you'll be dealing with.

What Does My Printer Need to Know About My Project? - Before you start a project, I'd recommend talking to a few printers to ask for printing quotes. It's best to talk to them before your job is designed. This way, you can figure out what specifications the printer recommends and what kind of job is in your budget.

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