When you send us your print-ready art, the first thing we do is verify that it is, indeed, print ready. During preflight, we evaluate the art for several possible issues to confirm that the art fits the intended die, that we know the correct positioning, and that the art will reproduce as intended. In this article, we give you a breakdown of the different issues we screen for and how you can avoid—or help your customer avoid—these pitfalls.

***NOTE: Unless the art gets fixed, some of these issues NEVER GO AWAY! If you approve us to use problematic art, the problems can pop up at any time, meaning that you might dodge a bullet on the first run, but something could go wrong on the next run, or the next or the next. And we may not be willing to pick up the tab to reprint them, since you approved use of the art as is the first time around. So doing what you can to avoid or fix potential issues is always our recommendation!***

Sizing and Positioning

Sometimes customers send us a lone logo or text to be placed on a folder, uh, where? At what size? On which panel? Or we might get an 8-1/2 x 11 PDF with a logo on one page and an address on another page. Front and back? How to position? Or wait, you want the address on a pocket?!?! Oh dear…

These examples and others are what we like to call “NOT print ready”! But our pricing and turnaround times are contingent on our receiving print-ready art. The answer? Download the appropriate template from PocketFoldersFast.com/Templates. Our PDF templates can be opened in Illustrator or placed as images in Illustrator or InDesign. The easiest route, in our opinion, is to open the template in Illustrator, lock the template layer(s), then build your art to the template. Save the final version as a high quality PDF and send it to us.

 Put the template layer(s) ABOVE the art layers so you can be sure to position the art correctly. It’s very difficult to follow a template once you’ve covered it up with the artwork!

 If you place the template as an image in your working file, make sure it’s placed at 100% size, and don’t enlarge or reduce it to fit your artwork (yes, that happens!). Place the template at 100%, then build your artwork to the template.

Color

Oh, where to begin. In this age of easy-to-access, free or inexpensive stock art and design services like Canva, we get a LOT of RGB images, especially when end-customers who don’t know any better build the art themselves. But those of us in the know are very aware that, unless you search specifically for CMYK stock images/art, you’re most likely going to be downloading RGB files. This might not seem like a big deal, but some colors and design processes don’t convert well at all from RGB to CMYK. And then there are spot colors to contend with…

Here are our pro tips for avoiding color issues:

CMYK:
  • For placed images, make sure the source file is saved as CMYK.
  • When working in software like Illustrator, the document color mode should be set as CMYK.
  • If you have any doubts, open up your final PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro (Adobe Reader may also be able to do this) and convert RGB colors to CMYK. Learn more here.
SPOT COLORS:
  • If you’re printing spot colors, be sure they are named using the standard Pantone® naming convention (ex., PANTONE 293 C). We can’t work with colors called “spot blue” or “[Company] Red” or even “gold.” Unless we’re building a custom spot color for you, which is a whole different conversation, your spot colors should be named accordingly for the Pantone® color(s) we will actually be printing. 
  • If you’re NOT printing spot colors, then please convert any in your art file to process/CMYK before you send in the art. As with RGB, many PMS® colors don’t translate well to four-color process, so it’s best if YOU convert them so you can see what happens when you do. We can convert them for you, but we can’t guarantee that you’ll like the results.
  • Using metallic spot colors but printing in four-color process? Not a good idea! There is NO CMYK equivalent for metallic colors, so if you want your colors to shine, you have no choice but to print them as spot colors.
  • WHITE: Do you have a spot white in your file? Because if you do, there is currently no way for us to print that color. White areas in the art should be built using either 0C 0M 0Y 0K or the default white color in your software’s color palette (which is probably 0C 0M 0Y 0K). These areas will then simply knock out of the other colors, and the paper will show through (and assuming your paper is white—ta-da!).
BLUE:

Unfortunately, blues are tricky because cyan and magenta have this inconvenient way of creating purple. Your blue might look perfect on your screen, but on press, it might shift to having a purple hue or just straight-out turn purple. The way to avoid this is to keep the magenta at least 25% lower than the cyan (30% is better). High percentages of yellow and black can help too, but the only sure-fire fix is to adjust C and M accordingly. And if you’re concerned and want to see how your blues will print, we can send you a color proof for a reasonable fee.

BLACK:

For a nice deep, rich black, we recommend 60C 40M 40Y 100K—except in text, which should be 100K only for the easiest registration on press. DO NOT use registration black (100C 100M 100Y 100K). We cannot guarantee high quality for builds that add up to more than 300% (all four color percentages added together).

GRAY:

Here’s where converting from RGB to CMYK causes issues, because there’s no black in RGB. So when you convert an RGB gray to CMYK, you get a gray with little to no black in it. Why does that matter? Because if there’s variation on press (which can happen at any time), your CMY gray can suddenly turn blue or pink. That’s not good! It’s ALWAYS best to have black as the heaviest color in your gray builds. This is the ONLY foolproof way to avoid problems.

Bleed

Sometimes it can be hard to know how much bleed to use and where, but it’s important to remember that bleed is required. If you send in art that has inadequate bleed or no bleed, we’ll kick it back and ask you to fix it. If you OK using the art as is, we take no responsibility for misalignment with cuts and scores that causes the paper to show where it shouldn’t.

Your first line of defense here is to download the applicable template from our website for FREE—PocketFoldersFast.com/Templates. All of our standard templates include a bleed line.

Here’s a handy guide for you as well:

  • Cuts: 1/8″ bleed
  • Reinforced glue tab scores (ex, PF7): 1/16″ bleed (bleed onto the tab)
  • Nonreinforced glue tab scores (ex, PF1): 1/8″ bleed (bleed onto the tab)
  • Front/Back score: No bleed, align art exactly on the fold
  • Pocket scores: No bleed, align art exactly on the fold

Resolution

Here’s another tricky one because 300ppi (pixels per inch) is considered high resolution; however, there are ways to get around that requirement.

Some things you need to understand first:

  1. Resolution is fixed, meaning that an image with 72 pixels per inch will only ever have that number of pixels, no matter what size you make the image.
  2. Opening a low res image in Photoshop and changing the resolution to 300 does NOT help. It’s easy to take away pixels but nearly impossible to add them to any good effect. We often see 300ppi images that are fuzzy or pixelated, a telltale sign that the image resolution was bumped up in Photoshop, doing nothing for the actual quality of the image.
  3. Enlarging an image in Illustrator, InDesign, Canva, etc. reduces the quality of the image because it spreads out the pixels. A 300ppi image at twice its original size effectively becomes a 150ppi image. A 72ppi image becomes a 36ppi image! Yikes!

But here’s the good news. If you have a low res image that has large dimensions, and you shrink that image down enough, you can effectively create a high resolution image. Just like enlarging an image spreads out the pixels, making the image smaller pushes the pixels together. So a 72ppi image reduced to 1/4 its original size effectively becomes a 288ppi image. Yay! But…

DISCLAIMER: If your image quality is poor to begin with, no amount of size reduction or pixel manipulation will help. There is no substitute for quality images. If you send in art that includes images under 300ppi (or that are just plain poor quality), we will contact you and request your approval to move forward.

Overprinting

Generally speaking, overprinting should be used for black text only. If you need art to overprint, you’re better off using the “multiply” transparency setting in Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign. Other software may have a similar setting. It allows for an overprinting-style effect without any actual overprinting, which helps ensure that you don’t accidentally overprint the wrong thing.

If working in Adobe software, you can use the Overprint Preview or Separations Preview to check for unwanted overprinting and ensure that your art will print as intended.

Banding

Color gradients are so persnickety. Not enough color information? Too low res? Not a smooth enough transition? The result can be some very unattractive banding. And to make matters worse, sometimes the gradient looks just fine on-screen and the banding doesn’t show up until the art is converted to dots on plates. Figures.

There are lots of resources online with advice for preventing banding. A good start is to ensure that you’re working with high quality, high resolution images. TIFF and PSD file types are preferred because they hang onto all the file data (unlike auto-compressed files like JPEG’s). 

If you’re concerned about banding—or if we’re concerned for you (we’ll let you know)—it’s a good idea to do some research into the best ways to prevent or correct banding.

PDFs vs. Native Files

We highly recommend and greatly prefer working with high quality PDFs. They’re much easier to work with if something needs to be fixed, the images are automatically embedded, and fonts are easy to outline if necessary.

We also accept EPS, TIFF, PSD, AI, and INDD files. For vector EPS, AI, and INDD files, please convert fonts to outlines and embed images if possible. If not, be sure to send all images so we aren’t missing anything. For raster EPS, TIFF, and PSD files, ensure high quality, high resolution images.

 When saving or exporting your art to a PDF, don’t include hidden layers. These layers can increase the file size unnecessarily and cause issues for us if something needs to be fixed in your file.

Using a Die Line (Template) in the Art File

Using a die line in your art file to show positioning is extremely helpful—especially if it’s our die. Again, our templates are available for free at PocketFoldersFast.com/Templates. If you can’t find what you need, just contact us and we’ll help you out. (Any time you can set up your art on our die, it makes our lives much easier, so we’re happy to provide whatever template you need.)

When using a die line, please make sure we can remove it easily, or send two files—one with the die and one without.

 For whatever die line you use, put it in a custom spot color named simply “template.” Our frontend system will automatically remove it, leaving you with no need to worry that the die line might accidentally get printed (which we would never do anyway!).

 Sometimes we receive a JPG showing the art on the die or we get an FPO PDF that is password-protected. Neither of these files is of any use to us. Only two scenarios are helpful: (1) a PDF that includes an easy-to-remove template, and (2) two PDFs that are identical, except that one has the die in it and the other doesn’t.

 

We always do our best to ensure that we use your art correctly so that your folders look the way you expect them to. But it all starts with quality art and well-made print-ready files from you. If you have any questions as you build or save out your art files, let us know. And if we have any questions or concerns about your files, we’ll be in touch.