Preparing your artwork
This page helps to explain a few essentials when planning your artwork for print. Unlike most printing websites, we do accept all artwork formats. Of course we always prefer PDF documents, but we also understand that many home users do not have Adobe Acrobat to create PDF documents.
We keep our prices to a minimum by leaving the artwork to the user, but we do have graphic designers which can amend your artwork for a charge.
To ensure superior quality printing yourself, however, please read through these pointers to ensure that you are not disappointed with your artwork results. Also please remember that Microsoft Word is not competent at producing artwork for printing, however we will accept it if you have no alternative.
Fonts
The most common problem with PDF artwork seems to be that users do not embed their fonts into the document. It is essential that you supply the font if it is an unusual one.
If you are using PDF documents, please ensure that all of your fonts are embedded before uploading.
Print resolution
Computer screen resolution refers to the size of your pixels, whereas print resolution is measured as the number of printed dots per inch (dpi).
For proper printing artwork, a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (dots per inch) is required.
If you edit your artwork in a bitmap-type environment (i.e. GIF, TIFF, JPEG, BMP etc) then you should consider this in terms of pixels, using 300 pixels per inch (ppi). The artwork may appear unusually large on your computer screen, but it will be printed at the proper size.
Artwork bleed
Bleed is the term used to describe where artwork overlaps the print area's edge. It is necessary to include bleed whenever you want your artwork to reach the very edge of your prints.
With the correct bleed, once we chop the prints to the required size, every print will reach the edge as expected.
You should allow three millimetres (3mm) bleed for most print sizes and allow two millimetres (2mm) for small print sizes such as business cards and compliment slips.
PDF templates
We have prepared some templates to demonstrate margins & bleed, each also contains crop marks which designate where the artwork will be chopped for the finished size: