53 High Street
Edenbridge
Kent
TN8 5AL
Edenbridge
Kent
TN8 5AL
Copyright ©2010 Promotion House Limited
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big enough to cope | small enough to care
Everything we print starts life as artwork. Naturally our design team can create your artwork for you but we’re also happy for you to supply your own if you wish. We want to make life as simple as possible for you so we’ll take your artwork in any common format including Word and most graphics packages. However, if you’re new to creating artwork for print, there are certain requirements you may not be aware of, so please read our guide to supplying artwork before submitting to ensure that the final result is what you expected.
Getting the Best from Your Artwork
Here are a few pointers that we think will help you get the best from your artwork – particularly with regard to pictures:
Getting images from the Web
Images used on Web sites are known as bitmaps and are made up of little coloured dots called pixels. The resolution of images is between 75 – 96 dots per inch (DPI) which is fine for viewing on screen but unsuitable for printing where the required resolution needs to be at least 200 and preferably 300 DPI. What this essentially means is that images taken from the Web will print much smaller than you probably thought they would. If you try to resize these images upwards they will become blocky and the image will lose definition. In a nutshell, images from the Web are not usually suitable for printing.
So, What Images Can You Use?
· The best image formats for printing are EPS, TIF and JPEG.
· If you need to resize images, make them smaller rather than larger
· Try to ensure that your images for printing are supplied at the actual size for printing at 300DPI.
There are essentially two methods for creating different colours; RGB and CMYK. RGB is used to create screen colours, so everything you see on your computer monitor (and television screen for that matter) is made up from varying degrees of red, green and blue light (hence RGB). Printing, on the other hand, uses a four colour process to produce the full range of colours; cyan, magenta, yellow and black (which, for historical reasons, is what the ‘K’ stands for).
The default setting for RGB (with no colours applied – i.e. no light applied) is black. The default for CMYK (with no ink applied), is white. You can see therefore that the two systems are not directly compatible. Most graphics software will have a reasonable stab at converting between the two though.
For most graphics packages, the default is to create images in RGB format. However, if your artwork is created for printing, it must be supplied as CMYK. Once converted, your image on screen may appear to be flatter with duller colours. Don’t worry though. It will print beautifully.
The default setting for RGB (with no colours applied – i.e. no light applied) is black. The default for CMYK (with no ink applied), is white. You can see therefore that the two systems are not directly compatible. Most graphics software will have a reasonable stab at converting between the two though.
For most graphics packages, the default is to create images in RGB format. However, if your artwork is created for printing, it must be supplied as CMYK. Once converted, your image on screen may appear to be flatter with duller colours. Don’t worry though. It will print beautifully.
And what’s This ‘Bleed’ Thing all about?
If the artwork on your printed image goes right the edge of the page, you will need to ‘bleed’ the image slightly over the edge – i.e. make it slightly bigger than page size by about 3mm on all sides. We then cut through the extended area when we trim your pages to size. If your image only goes to the page edge, you will be left with a small but very noticeable white edge. It is therefore very important, if your artwork extends to edge of the page, to ensure you add bleed.
