Preparing Your Job Files
Before submitting your files to us, there are a number of things we require for a job to print correctly. Whether it was created on PC or a Mac, this list applies to both.
IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS CLOSELY!
Images
With the advancements of today's technologies, digital camera's and even camera phone images are being used more and more. Below are some tips on making sure the settings are acceptable for use in print.
1. Keep in mind that digital images created by phones and digital cameras are, more or less, set "out-of-the-box" for on-screen purposes. This means that they are only 72dpi, and the printing process uses a much higher dpi/resolution of 300dpi.
2. For the reason stated above you must go into your camera "settings" menu and select the highest resolution, or "best quality", possible. Now this will most likely reduce the number of pictures that you'll be able to save to the SIMM chip, but will ensure quality images come printing time.
3. One alternative option would be (available on some, but not all cameras) a medium-quality image. This will give you the option to take and save more pictures to your camera, but when converted to 300dpi printable images, will reduce the dimensions of the final image size. (For example: a mid-quality - 150dpi image at 5"x7" would print at 2.5"x3.5")
For additional help in figuring your image sizes, click on the "Image Calculator" link in the column to the left.
Files
1. Be sure that all of your image, illustration and pagination files are in CMYK mode, as that's the mode that printing presses work in. If you don't, additional time and/or expenses will likely occur in order for us to rectify the problem.
2. All photos are to be 300dpi CMYK for best output. They also need to be saved as either high-quality setting .jpg, .eps or .tif files. Illustrator and other vector-based files should be saved as .eps.
3. All fonts for the entire project, both screen and printer, are to be included.
4. All images (photos & illustrations) need to be included. Most of the pagination softwares on the market merely "place" the source file, in that it links to an outside file and therefore the source file must accompany or it won't "know" what's to go in that spot and will print extremely low-resolution if at all.
5. All files need to have a suffix appending. Claffey Printing accepts and supports most any (but not all) softwares, so if the extensions are at the end of all of the files, not only will there be more likelyhood of the file opening correctly on our end, but if there are files having extensions to software that we don't happen to have, at least we know from/to what software that file is associated and how best to handle it.
6. A PDF file of the job showing how its to look when completed is required. This should be a low-rez version so that the images (and the rest of the content) are sampled down. This will aid in keeping file size down, while showing the final product as it was intended.
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