Supplying Artwork to BMPress

LITHO ARTWORK:

LARGE FORMAT ARTWORK:

HINTS & TIPS:

1. Sending Files
2. Supported Software
3. File Formats
4. Document Size
5. Client Hard Copy
6. Layouts/Impositions
7. Bleed
8. Fonts
9. Colour, Pantones, Vignettes
10. Photos, Graphics & Scans
11. File Pre-flight Checking
12. Proofs

1. Sending Files
2. Supported Software
3. Hard Copy
4. Document Size
5. Colour
6. Fonts
7. Scans
7. Files

1. Hints & Tips
2. Scanning
3. Text
4. Fonts
5. Multi Page Brochures, Reports & Booklets
6. Things to Avoid when creating artwork

LITHO ARTWORK:

1. Sending and Providing Your Electronic Files/Media

Quality Printing, BMPress Printers, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

If you would like to send files to us electronically we recommend that they are compressed first. This is particularly important for Apple Mac and large files on any platform. We have decompressing software to interpret: PKzip for PC and Stuffit for Apple Mac

There are several ways of sending files:

2. Graphic Software Packages Supported

Additionally vector-based programs (Illustrator, Freehand) produce crisper edges on text and shapes than pixel-based programs like Photoshop and therefore make for a clearer print

3. File Formats

Printing, BMPress Printers, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

The preferred production workflow format for BM Press is print or press optimised PDF. Ideally you should send your files to us in this format. The PDF should be prepared at print or press quality.

Alternatively we can also accept flattened tif (Tiff) or jpg (Jpeg) format. though this format is that all text and graphics will be Bitmap rather than Vector quality. If the file is High Resolution (300 dpi size for size) then in our experience the results are generally acceptable.

All files should be saved in CMYK.

PDF Pre-requisites

4. Document Size

Work within a proportion of the finished artwork size:

The minimum image size should be at least 25% of the actual physical output at 300dpi with no compression. Images should be originated or scanned at this size and not enlarged afterwards.

Page Sizes:

 

5. Client Hard Copy

A Client Hard Copy Proof should ideally always be submitted with the electronic artwork. This can be defined as a master, which is correct in all respects, against which we can check all that we do, and which the content is a perfect representation of the job being printed by BM Press who can be assured that the text is all present, that the fonts are correct, that the photos have not moved etc.

We strongly recommend checking it carefully before sending it to us.

When a high resolution (Press Quality) PDF, jpg or tif file is provided as the origination for printing then this file can also serve as the Client Hard Copy Proof.

6. Layouts/Impositions

All impositions will be completed by BM Press. Consequently all files should be supplied 'one up'. Booklets should either be in separate files for each page or number order pages (BM Press will sort out the printers spreads).

7. The Need for Bleed

Bleed of 3mm is required on all printed jobs, as partners, we are going to achieve our joint aim of an excellent finished print job. Bleed is required to allow for the tolerance of Guillotines used in the finishing/cutting of the job and eliminate any margin of error.

8. Fonts

BM Press possess all the most popular Mac and PC fonts.

When the file is supplied as a PDF, tif or jpg, fonts become much less of an issue since these formats generally embed the fonts required to print.

Where you have used a rare font outside the 'normal' range we recommend converting the text created with this font into curves, paths or outlines – dependent upon the software package being used. This means that we do not neccesarily require the original font when we print your job.

9. Colour Matching / Pantones / Vignettes

There are a large number of variables which can affect the colour produced in Full Colour Printing. Simply looking at the appearance of colours on a monitor, especially if no monitor calibration has been carried out, is unlikely to produce predictable printed results.

In just the same way an un-calibrated desktop printer, such as a laser or inkjet may well produce very different colours to those produced on a professional printing press.

Rather than leave colour matching to chance and 'keeping your fingers crossed' we strongly recommend that colours be chosen from Pantone Colour Swatches and charts.

Where you have a particular colour issue, for example a requirement to match to a specific company colour this MUST be brought to our attention at order stage.

Additionally, if you have a swatch of the colour required please include a hard copy of that with your order. We cannot be held responsible if your printed work does not match your requirements unless those requirements are brought to our attention before we print.

In preparing your artwork remember about:

10. Photographs, Graphics & Scanning

Any Photographs requiring scanning should be scanned size for size at 300dpi and saved as CMYK images in TIFF or EPS format non compressed, and imported into your file – to get the best results. Full colour and halftone images must be scanned at a minimum of 120ppi (240dpi) to full scale actual size i.e finished artwork size.
We accept original art, transparencies, 35mm slides, prints or negatives for high end scanning and placement.

 

11. File Pre-flight Checking

Quality Printing, BMPress Printers, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Each and every job sent to BM Press is carefully checked by an experienced designer and repro professional prior to print.

We are committed to ensuring that finished work is the best we can achieve.
Where we find potential problems with the files you have provided we work with you to resolve the problems. It may be that a new file is required or alternatively we can often correct the issues.

Document Setup Check

Artwork Checklist

12. Proofing

BM Press are pleased to offer 3 options for producing produce proofs from your Digital Artwork prior to printing.

PDF proofs: Most commonly requested and these are sent digitally via Email. They are ideal for checking layout and content but are not colour accurate and so are of limited use when there are issues of colour, such as matching to a Corporate House Colour.

Laser Proofs: these are sent by post and provide something tangible to look at. These are colour accurate as the Desktop Proofer is calibrated identically to the Production Press.

Machine proofs: these are an exact match to the job which will eventually be printed since they are a small run of the finished job on press. We would always recommend a small run of print (to be used as a wet proof) prior to any very large run of print. Additionally these would have to be arranged with the client for checking and approval and therefore minimise machine downtime.

 

LARGE FORMAT ARTWORK:

1. Sending and Providing Your Electronic Files/Media

Digital Printing, BMPress Printers, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

If you would like to send files to us electronically we recommend that they are compressed first. This is particularly important for Apple Mac and large files on any platform. We have decompressing software to interpret: PKzip for PC and Stuffit for Apple Mac

There are several ways of sending files:

2. Graphic Software Packages Supported

Additionally vector-based programs (Illustrator, Freehand) produce crisper edges on text and shapes than pixel-based programs like Photoshop and therefore make for a clearer print

 

3. Client Hard Copy

A Client Hard Copy Proof should ideally always be submitted with the electronic artwork. This can be defined as a master, which is correct in all respects, against which we can check all that we do, and which the content is a perfect representation of the job being printed by BM Press who can be assured that the text is all present, that the fonts are correct, that the photos have not moved etc.

We strongly recommend checking it carefully before sending it to us.

When a high resolution (Press Quality) PDF, jpg or tif file is provided as the origination for printing then this file can also serve as the Client Hard Copy Proof.

4. Document Size

Work within a proportion of the finished artwork size:

The minimum image size should be at least 25% of the actual physical output at 300dpi with no compression. Images should be originated or scanned at this size and not enlarged afterwards. Bleed: 5-10mm for all large format print.

5. Pantone/Special Colours & Blend Effects

PMS, RGB or any other colours should be converted to CMYK with process separation checked before submitting for output. Duo tones must be converted to process colours for output. Vignettes/blends have a tendency to band in all electronic output devices. Best results are achieved in vignettes with a tone value change of not less than 50%.

6. Fonts

All fonts should be included with the file. Quark Express - you may use collect for output Freehand - embed the fonts. It is essential that you clearly identify all font types used in your document. Please create separate folders for Documents, Images, and Fonts, and can we have a .eps copy of the file as well.

7. Scanning

Any scanned images should be scanned as high resolution scans and saved as CMYK in TIFF or EPS format non compressed, and imported into your file Ð to get the best results. Full colour and halftone images must be scanned at a minimum of 120ppi (240dpi) to full scale actual size i.e finished artwork size. We accept original art, transparencies, 35mm slides, prints or negatives for high end scanning and placement.

8. Supplying the file

Always supply any additional files imported or linked files with the supplied document. Each print file should be clearly named. You can supply the file on any of the following media to the address at top of page:

HINTS & TIPS

1. Hints & Tips

CMYK Printing, BMPress Printers, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

All computers, scanners, digital cameras and monitor create images using combinations of just three colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB).

The BM Press Printing presses use four different colours to print these images – CMYK - Cyan (light blue), Magenta (pinky red), Yellow and Black (or CMYK ) known as Process Colour).

Consequently at some stage of pre-production stage, any RGB images must be converted to CMYK. Conversions from RGB to CMYK are best created in software packages such as Photoshop and this should be completed prior to submitting the electronic file/artwork to BM Press.

If you don’t perform the conversion yourself, our production process will apply a standard profile RGB to CMYK conversion meaning that colours may possibly be significant different that the designer has intended.

We can however also use specific PantoneÆ Spot colours for jobs involving more than a 4-colour process iiif there are specific colours to be achieved.. Spot colours does incur additional cost in both re-pro (colour separations) and printing.

BM Press use Process Colour, unless specific colours are required in the final printed job, PantoneÆ Spot colours must be converted to their CMYK equivalent before your file is sent to us.

You can check your document by printing ‘separations’ on your desktop printer – see the help file that came with your application for more details. If anything other than a cyan, magenta, yellow and black separation prints, then you’ve got unwanted colours that you need to convert. This is also a good way of checking knock- out/overprinting settings.

Some RGB and Spot colours do not have a direct CMYK equivalent – the technical term for this is “out of gamut”. If you have chosen a colour that is out of gamut, your software will choose the closest equivalent CMYK colour, which may be very different from the colour you intended.

You’ll get best reproduction from colours that are made up from one or two inks (i.e. magenta and cyan etc).

When using lighter shades, avoid tints that contain less than 10% of either Cyan, Magenta, Yellow or Black, as they usually print much lighter than they appear on screen.

CMYK Printing, BMPress Printers, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

For best results, use tints containing 10% to 30% where possible.

Try to avoid large areas of the same colour too – that’s where colour variation becomes most noticable. Best to use textures or images instead.

Black: To get the best from 4 colour process, black can be produced in two ways. The first method is single colour black, made from 100% black ink. The alternative is rich black, which consists of 100% black and 40% cyan. A rich black should be used on larger areas to ensure an even, dark coverage, as the second ink colour disguises any inconsistencies. However, rich black should never be used on small text as any tiny deviance in registration will lead to a blurred effect.

Also be aware that the higher the percentage ink coverage, the longer the drying time required. This is particularly true of uncoated stocks such as letterhead. Black will inevitably appear duller on uncoated stock because of the absorbency of the paper. This absorbency also means that any fine detail reversed out of black may disappear.

2. Scanning - Working with Photographs

3. Text:

When working with small text, it’s best not to use colours which contain more than one ink. All printing presses have a tiny variation in the positioning of the different colour printing plates. It’s fine to use coloured text in headlines or type above, say, 12 point, but below that the blurring will be noticable and won’t look too hot.

The same thing happens when you knock white text out of a coloured background made from more than one ink.

Be careful if you are putting text over a photographic background. You’ll make the text very hard to read. To overcome this, take the photograph into an image-editing package and ‘bleach’ or lighten the image. You will have to lighten the image quite a bit more than you may think is necessary – always think to yourself “is it more important to see the image, or read the text?”

If the text is more important, it may be best not to put it over the photograph at all. Some Freehand text effects are known to cause problems, so don’t use underline, shadow, strikethrough and any item from “text effects” menu.

4. Fonts

If you are going “cross-platform”, ie. from PC to Mac or vice versa, remember that fonts aren’t necessarily compatible. If doubt, supply fonts (including printer fonts) with the job – preferably in their own folders.

5. Multi Page Brochures, Annual Reports and Booklets

DESIGN AS SINGLE PAGES
Create a separate page in your artwork for each page of your Booklet.
You can supply a multi-page document or one page per document.
Please do not supply “printer’s pairs” or spreads.

ADD 3MM BLEED TO EACH SIDE
Booklets needs more bleed than other products.
Look at the finished page size of the Booklet. Add 3mm to all sides of your page – a total of 6mm across each axis.
You even need to add bleed to the edge which forms the spine.

ALLOW FOR CREEP
In a stapled Booklet the bulk of the paper causes the inner pages to extend (creep) further out than the outer pages when folded.
When trimmed the inner pages are narrower than the outer pages. The amount of creep is dependent on the number of pages and paper thickness. The thicker the Booklet, the more you need to keep important objects away from the edges.

MIND YOUR MARGINS
Normally, we recommend that you keep important objects at least 4mm from the ‘trim’ size. As a result of creep, we’d advise you to increase your margin
to avoid anything being chopped off.

6. Things to Avoid when creating artwork

Hairlines Hairlines - these are ‘device dependent’. This means that they print at different resolutions on different machines. They may print fine on your 300dpi laser printer, but will disappear on BM Press’s repro process. Use 0.25pt instead.

Texture Fills - these print erratically (or not at all). Best to select the object with the fill and choose ‘Convert to Bitmap’ from the ‘Bitmaps’ menu. Make sure you choose 300dpi and CMYK though, and don’t make the background transparent.
Postscript Fills are erratic. They don’t look good anyway, use something else.
Compression you can happily use WinZIP or StuffIT to compress your files, but never compress images using LZW compression or JPEG encoding. Doing so will cause lots of problems and may result in your file not printing at all.

Quark Picture Boxes - a ‘feature’ of Quark Xpress is that if you don’t fill a picture box with colour, the TIFF inside may print with a ragged edge. So, make sure your picture box is filled with ‘white’ rather than ‘none’. Cut-out EPSs are OK.
Overprint – always be careful with overprint settings (especially in Quark). If you set objects to overprint, they will not ‘knock-out’ the background, and will look very different to what you see on screen or proof. Black text is generally set as default to overprint. This is usually OK.

EPSs within EPSs - should be avoided at all costs. Postscript errors are at their greatest when this is done.

Duotone/RGB images - will either print in black and white, or with very washed out colours – always convert to CMYK.

Borders - avoid a pronounced border (especially on Business Cards), since even a half millimetre movement when guillotined will be noticeable.

 

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