Prepress Tips for Designers

[swcook6]

Although a PDF can be made from Word, it contains RGB and usually when a person uses Word, everything else is usually bad with the file, (ie image res, bleeds, etc)
Unfortunately, folks preparing files now have no idea about the downstream process, most have never heard of film or separations, etc, and if it looks good on the monitor, they think they have created a masterpiece.

 

[BarbWPP]

Black IS a color, and counts as one when talking "2-color printing" etc; but is NOT the same as Registration. They are NOT interchangeable.!!

 

[dabob]

You can't die cut one side of a sheet and expect to print on the other . . . .

 

[richsweeney]

Don't think you are doing us a favor by imposing artwork. Stop that.

I have on my web site, we charge $35 extra for pre-imposed artwork.

 

[JoeatData]

Yes. enlarging your placed 72 dpi web downloaded decreases resolution.
No, we can't enlarge and increase the resolution for you.

 

[Cmd-P]

Another one that's good is I will have a customer working with indesign.....have black type through-out the paragraph, then all of a sudden have a sentence that's RGB black or registration.

Reminds me of the occasional space-between-words set in an obscure and unsupplied font.

 

[pacart]

Yes, my digital press can match most spot colors, No it can't do metallics.

Illustrator is not a layout program!

Stop doing your type in Photoshop!

Learn what a spot color is!

No a tri-fold does not have 3 equal sized panels.

 

[pacart]

Oh, and yes i will charge extra if i have to deal with any software made by Micrsoft, ie...

Publisher
Word
Excel

 

[Bob@MidAmerican]

Do not use the default crop mark setting in anything. Make sure to change it to a minimum of .125".

Can't tell you how many times I've had to go through a PDF page by page and remove them.

 

[DCurry]

Do not use the default crop mark setting in anything. Make sure to change it to a minimum of .125".

Can't tell you how many times I've had to go through a PDF page by page and remove them.

There's a Pitstop action that automates this - it deletes anything that is entirely outside of the Trim Box.

 

[Al Ferrari]

Is that a minimum length, or distance from the corner?

What applications have a default value less than this?

Al

 

[Tpyo]

If you don't want to believe what I'm trying to tell you, please Google the same the phrase/word <insert item> and see what other online commercial printers have to say. You may get a bit of variety of answers saying approximately the same thing, but they all boil down to the fact that commercial print does indeed have standards, and if those standards are ignored, efficiency, quality of the finished product and indeed, your reputation will suffer.

 

[GuruMorgor]

Was wanting to put something witty in here earlier and couldn't think of anything until... got called up front by boss, with client and they're talking about making a 96" x 30" banner. Guess where the artwork is coming from? if you guessed from a business card, then you're correct sir! I also laughed at the post about an 88pg saddle-stitch gig, I just did a 96 pager supplied in Publisher just wraught with ignorance all through it. got er done!

 

[GLMTart]

When I tell you I need your image with a minimum original resolution of 300 please don't take your 72 resolution image and change the little numbers to 300. I can tell.

 

[Bob@MidAmerican]

There's a Pitstop action that automates this - it deletes anything that is entirely outside of the Trim Box.

Doesn't really help when you have full bleeds

 

[Mike F]

One of our clients has a "designer" who has snookered them into believing she is all-print-knowing for years. This designer does a beautiful job of using "Collect for Output" in Quark… one CfO folder for each and every page of a 300+ page catalog. Yes, every page of the catalog is a SEPARATE Quark doc, times 300+. If you are really into relinking artwork this is your dream job.

I will light a candle for everyone on this thread…

Love it, thanks for sharing.

To add, and this is on the wide format side of things, no sir, I cannot take your 120px x 300px photo that you took with your phone and make you a 12ft x 20 foot banner with it... unless you want to look like you're in Minecraft.

 

[macjmccoy]

Please don't design your 3 panel brochure as 2 separate pages on one 30x40 Illustrator document.

Thank you,
Please drive through.

 

[WOC_Direct]

Oh, and yes i will charge extra if i have to deal with any software made by Micrsoft, ie...

Publisher
Word
Excel

Don't forget Powerpoint (and PDFs made from Powerpoint). We receive those often too.

 

[Visualaid]

to all you witty prepressers, i haven't laughed this much in a while, thanks.

Here's another one:
Don't tell my csr that "yes i made sure i packaged everything in indesign, all the links are there and fonts" and then I get the file and all the links and fonts are missing. Leave it to the pro's you cheap a#@!, pay a professional to do your work.

 

[Dave_T]

How about don't rasterize your file and ask me to make text changes. That's even worse than converting all the text to outlines. Usually once I get a file from the customer the designer is long gone and not available to make changes or supply a working file with live text.