The bleed in 'Printing Terminology' is the extra margin for a product to be printed which should be trimmed off to calculate final size of product to be printed.The aim of Bleed is to ensure continuity of the color to edge of product.
Printing products , such as business cards or postcards etc are not directly printed on the paper of that size. Several print jobs were organized next to one another on large sheets of paper and then products are trimmed individually to fit the final size of product. During this process, the edges of product may be trimmed within or beyond the trimming line. This results sometimes or usually white edge or the portion of artwork from the surrounding jobs. That's why bleed is required on each individual product so that any imperfection can be avoided.
All print-ready files require a full bleed. You may view the given list for correct bleed of your product.Ex- Usually almost all business cards have a bleed of .01", a business card of dimension 2.4"x 4" will have a bleed size of 2.5"x4.1"
0.1" bleed: maximum type of business cards, folded business cards, bookmarks, CD packages, club flyers, collectors cards, DVD packages, event tickets, most postcards, rack cards, rip business cards, Rolodex cards, stickers, table tents, greeting cards, "wink" special shapes.
0.125" bleed: a-frame signs, banners, brochures, door hangers, envelopes, flyers, folded hang tags, hang tags, illumaprint panels, letterheads, mini menus, notepads, posters, posters (wide), roll labels, retractable banner stands, staggered cut flyers, window clings, window decals, yard signs.
0.25" bleed: booklets, calendars, catalogs
0.3" bleed: folders
0.325" bleed: business cards with round corners in either 2'' x 3.5'' and 3.35'' x 2.17'' size. Postcards with round corners in the following sizes: 4'' x 6'', 5.5'' x 8.5'', 4.25'' x 5.5'', 5'' x 7''. All special shapes, except for "wink" special shape, which is 0.1".
A design contains guidelines from where the products is to be cropped. You can create crop marks using Photoshop.
a. Open your design file in Photoshop
b. Go to File -> Print
c. You will see "Output" On the pop up menu's drop Down List
d. Click "Corner Crop Marks" in checkbox
d. Press "Print"
Please submit your designs with crop marks outside of the design itself and ensure it must not be inside the design because we do not remove crop marks from design.
Image Area, as the name suggests is the area of the artwork that will appear on the final print.
The Trimming Zone( also called the trim line), is the line where product can be trimmed to its final size. Please note that there may be variations from trimming line in final product and perfect trimming cannot be ensured.
Bitmap images are the images which can be stored in high resolution but they lost their resolution when scaled and tend to appear jagged when zoomed and also they appear blurry when reduced in size. These kind of images are good for storing digital images. For printing, they are not so much suitable. A vector graphics is most suitable for printing because they can be enlarged to any size without losing its quality.
A Vector image uses a mathematical formula to scale and they are made of lines and curves. They can be enlarged to any scale without losing quality and so they are most suitable for printing. The example given below will make it more clear.
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Formats supported to uploads: TIF, .TIFF, .EPS, .AI, .PSD, .BMP, .GIF, .JPG, .PNG, .PDF. Recommended:
Use JPG to reduce file size and ensure all layers are flattened for other formats.
.TIF (Tagged Image File) - High-quality graphics format that is often used for storing multi-colored images. Supports layers, multiple pages, raster images, vector images, lossy compression, and lossless compression.
.TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) - High-quality graphics format that is often used for storing multi-colored images. Supports layers, multiple pages, raster images, vector images, lossy compression, and lossless compression.
.EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) - PostScript file used primarily in the transfer of images to different operating systems.
.AI (Adobe Illustrator file) - Vector graphics file that uses paths connected by points.
.PSD (Photoshop Document) - Image file created by Adobe Photoshop; supports various types of Photoshop image options, including image layers, adjustment layers, etc. We recommend that .PSD files be flattened prior to being uploaded.
.BMP (Bitmap) - High-quality graphics format which allows it to produce large file sizes and uses image compression algorithms that can decrease file size.
.GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) - Uses lossless compression that may not degrade the quality of the image. GIFs store image data using indexed color, with a maximum of 256 colors.
.JPG (Image Compression File) - Compressed image format that uses lossy compression; commonly used for storing realistic photos (digital photos), since it is able to compress substantially with minimal loss in image quality.
.PNG (Portable Network Graphics) - A bitmapped image format with lossless data compression. Gradients come out smoother and do not have the distortions that may appear in a .JPG. Used mainly for archiving files. Does not support CMYK.
.PDF (Portable Document Format) - The most preferred file format to be set in pre-press quality. Ideal for viewing on multiple computers, because it preserves the formatting, fonts, and other elements within the document on different computers, as well as when it is printed.
.TIFF and .TIF are same file formats with difference of letter. In window file extension, there is only 3 letters. Ex. .txt, .doc etc. So is .TIF. There will be absolutely no difference even if you rename .TIFF to .TIF and vice versa.
Maximum file size for uploads: 75MB (megabytes) per file.
Please check file size before submitting us to print. You may check file size in Photoshop, click on Image > Image Size, and proportion your image correctly. JPG format has reduced file size. If uploading other formats, please ensure that all layers are flattened
In typography, a typeface (also known as font family) is a set of one or more fonts each composed of glyphs that share common design features. Time New Roman is one of common typeface and similarly Arial.There are many kinds of typefaces. Ex- Roman,Black letter,Mono spaced,Symbol etc.
A font is a graphical representation of text that may include a different typeface, point size, weight, color, or design.Ex- Times New Roman is a series of fonts. Two fonts can be of same typeface but of different size or thickness. One font can be bold, italic or normal.Thus we can say, fonts are subset of typeface which designates the style and size of typeface.
Resolution is measured generally in dpi (dots per inch) in printing industry. Thus 100dpi means 100 dots in one inch of an image. A higher value of resolution indicates better quality of image.
Another unit for halftone screen is LPI(Lines Per Inch). It indicates how closer lines are in halftone grid. Again, an higher value of LPI means closer lines and ultimately higher image quality. To determine correct resolution both dpi and LPI are taken into account. The printer dpi and required LPI is needed to determine appropriate resolution. An image should have usually always have 1.5-2 times dpi as LPI. We print with 200LPI for high quality beautiful prints!
Please submit file formats at a resolution of 350dpi at 100% of the final print size to get it printed correctly. If submitted lower than 350 dpi resolution, the print quality will have drop substantially. For signage, please submit files of a resolution of 150 dpi.
dpi= Dot Per Inch
dpi= Dot Per Inch
High-quality images can be obtained from Stock Photography of high resolution or high quality scanned images. A digital camera of more than 2.4 Mega pixel too can have a high resolution image.
Please avoid taking images from Internet because they may have copyright protection and they may not be of high resolution.
An images looking sharp in monitor does not mean it is really of high resolution because of big difference of resolution of Monitors and printers. If you are purchasing an image,please purchase it of resolution 350 dpi.
The original files must be created at 350 dpi or 150 dpi for signage. If it is of lower resolution then scaling will diminish the quality of image.
If you are taking photography, then camera should be set at high resolution.
