Prepress Tips for Designers

[Visualaid]

No, I can't remove the 'Shutterstock' watermark from your stolen stock-photos...

the new spot healing brush or whatever its called works, so actually you could if it's a simple stolen stock photo but the res would suck

 

[DCurry]

Doesn't really help when you have full bleeds

Actually, yes it does. Works like a charm as long as your page boxes are properly defined. If you run the action and it doesn't appear to do anything, check your page boxes.

 

[DCurry]

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

What applications have a default value less than this?

Al

He's referring to the offset distance from the trim. InDesign's default value for marks offset is 0.0833". Assuming the print shop wants .125" bleed (this is a standard value), then the crop marks will show in the bleed area, effectively reducing the amount of usable bleed to .0833".

I'd like to see Adobe link the offset value to the bleed value as a default, so if I increase the bleed I want to show it will automatically change the marks offset by a corresponding amount. Of course, it should be over-rideable, but by making it a default most clueless users wouldn't have to think about it and we'd get better PDFs.

Actually, I like having crop marks on my submitted art - it shows me what the customer intends as far as trims. I dislike having to guess at their intent, and if you've ever gotten artwork that is floating out of center on a page that is a different size than what you're expecting you know what I mean.

 

[pdan]

You can probably create a tint of that color rather than applying transparency.

If it bleeds on three sides, 8.625 x 11.25 is NOT what I want.

Setting up your document as 8.75 x 11.25 is NOT the same as defining .125 bleeds.

 

[Lennyr]

Tell them that they are in danger of have their pdf privileges revoked by the international agency that monitors pdfs.
That will scare the hell out of them.
Maybe we should start one?

 

[razvan]

please don not put any text or graphics at 1 mm from the cutting edge on a trifold or 16 pages saddle stitch and expect to have exactly 1 mm on the final product. oh ... and stop overprinting white objects

 

[DCurry]

As an aside, I think I know why white objects are often set to Overprint:

No one ever creates a logo or piece of art in Illustrator as White the first time. Usually, the need for a knockout version comes much later after the logo was created and the designer wants to use the logo in reverse. The logo was originally created as Black only, and it was set to Overprint because that's usually what you'd want. So, the designer opens up the Black logo, changes everything to White, does a Save As... and moves on. They don't realize that the logo was set to OP in the first place because overprints are just not on their radar, if they even understand them at all.

 

[Sev]

Actually, I like having crop marks on my submitted art - it shows me what the customer intends as far as trims. I dislike having to guess at their intent, and if you've ever gotten artwork that is floating out of center on a page that is a different size than what you're expecting you know what I mean.

I also really prefer crop marks on supplied PDF's. This way there is no second-guessing, and to me, it usually means that the designer actually knows what they are doing in making a properly prepared PDF.

-Sev

 

[inktrends]

Not a good idea to always convert fonts to outlines. When you convert a font to outlines it often makes the font slightly bolder and this can lead to undesirable results.

 

[Hopkins Printing]

If your job requires a spot varnish/UV, put the varnish/UV artwork in the same file as the CMYK artwork on its own layer.

 

[Hopkins Printing]

...oh...and don't use QuarkXPress LOL

 

[WishIWasScotty]

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.

With small text edits I much prefer outlines to raster. At least then I can copy the letters from elsewhere in the file to make up the text they want.

 

[Fredpan123]

this is a plague to all of us because the schools that teached pre-press have people teaching who do not even have the slightest idea about printing on the other end. the only printer they know are the ones that populate their desktops.
printing: offset or digital have their own peculiarities and orientations. it takes time to learn all these aspects and these are the areas that these teachers of graphic design should dwell before they come teach other people who go out of the classrooms believing they know.
we would get some files that are a total nightmare > we have to bounce the job because you could spend so many hours fixing the files we cannot even kick it in to the final price. so your time is totally wasted.

 

[zevrix]

It looks like his "last printer" did all of it for him for free - and now you're suffering.

 

[JoeatData]

It looks like his "last printer" did all of it for him for free - and now you're suffering.

We get this alot when we get a new client that supples a publication for reprint.
It's always......"Well it's the same exact file we gave to our last printer and they didn't say anything about the lo-res or rgb art".

 

[zevrix]

We get this alot when we get a new client that supples a publication for reprint.
It's always......"Well it's the same exact file we gave to our last printer and they didn't say anything about the lo-res or rgb art".

Or maybe quite the opposite: it was all included in his "last printer's" price, that is the printer was expensive. Now the customer got excited that he found someone cheaper - only to find out he'll have to pay the same price one way or another anyway.

 

[buckeye]

And please quit sending Facing Pages documents that need 4 sided bleeds for coil or perfect bound jobs. Even after telling customers not to do it and why, they still do.

-Erik

 

[WishIWasScotty]

We get this alot when we get a new client that supples a publication for reprint.
It's always......"Well it's the same exact file we gave to our last printer and they didn't say anything about the lo-res or rgb art".

I've gotten that except that instead of the file, I get the hard copy to recreate. It looks so bad I'm astonished that they printed it in the first place, nevermind that they want MORE of them.

 

[Colorblind]

Having been on both sides of the fence, I know it's fun to rant at that kind of stuff. That being said, I'm just glad not all prepress workers have been replaced with such systems: SendMyAd

 

[Possumgal]

Opening a low res piece of art in Photoshop and changing the resolution upward does not make it a high res file. Neither does saving it as a PDF.

In fact, saving anything as a PDF does not fix any mistakes, but some of my custys think it does.