Design Hints

What types of images will work?

If you are scanning images from photographs, it is better to save them in either tif or eps format. These image formats will preserve the color and sharpness of your pictures the best.

File formats like gif or jpg compress the picture’s color and pixel resolution, causing color shifts and blurriness. Since jpg and gif are the most predominant image formats on the web, it's not a good idea to simply lift an image from someone's website and use it in a layout.

When using pictures from a digital camera, jpg’s will work fine; the quality of jpg images from digital cameras seems to be much better than jpg’s that are used on the web. You must do the math, however, to make sure that it is high enough in pixel resolution. For instance, if your camera puts out a typical image of 1280 x 960 pixels at 72dpi, you get about 17" x 13" of photograph (at 72dpi); this is the same amount of detail as an image which is 4" x 3" at 300dpi, so it's safe to reduce or enlarge that image in your layout software up to about 4" x 3" in dimension.


Will my printed piece look exactly like it does on my computer monitor?

Scanners and digital cameras create images using combinations of just three colors: Red, Green and Blue (called RGB). These are the colors that computers use to display images on your screen. But printing presses print full color pictures using a different set of colors: Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black (called CMYK). So at some stage your RGB file must be translated to CMYK in order to print it on a printing press. This is easily done using an image editing program like Adobe PhotoShop or Corel Photo Paint.

However, you will have more control over the appearance of your printed piece if you convert all of the images from RGB to CMYK before sending them to us.  Even though when we receive RGB images, we do a custom color conversion to CMYK, it is possible to make colors in RGB that can't be reproduced using CMYK.  Thus, the converted colors may not be to your liking. And we want you to be happy, so please, take the time to prepare your file properly. We have ICC profiles that we can provide you with to help convert your images to CMYK. We cannot be responsible for sub-par results if you furnish low-res images or RGB images.

So it's best to select any colors you use for fonts or other design elements in your layout using CMYK or Pantone definitions instead of RGB.

Can I use colored text?

While it is feasible to use color on text of 8 point size or larger, colorizing smaller text should not occur.  Because all printing presses have a little bit of variance in the positions of the color plates, the cyan, magenta, yellow and black portions of the text characters don't line up exactly causing little colored halos around the characters.  The same thing holds true for white (knock-out) text on a dark or colored background.

What are bleeds, and do I need them?

Printing that goes right to the edge of the paper is considered to be a bleed. The way to do this is to make your document actual size and extend the bleed or photographs 1/8" beyond the final trim marks. Then after we have printed your piece, we will trim off that extra 1/8 " all the way around, and you will have color all the way to the edges of your piece.

What is the difference between Pantone spot colors and process colors?

Spot colors are produced by mixing ink pigments rather than blending screens of process color and are also referred to in the industry as match or PMS colors.  When printing spot colors, inks are specially mixed to match each color in your file.  In order to ensure precision, inks are mixed according to industry-standard formulas.  Spot colors should be used when a logo or identity program demands a precise match, a project incorporates colors outside the CMYK gamut, a large area must be filled with solid colors, or if metallic, fluorescent or other specialized inks will be used. 

Process colors, also referred to as CMYK, produce a range of several thousand colors by blending varying percentage screens of (C)yan, (M)agenta, (Y)ellow, and Blac(K) inks.  Nearly any imaginable color may be derived from this base of just four inks.  Process colors should be chosen when a project incorporates more than three colors, when multiple spot colors fall into the CMYK gamut, when printing photographic or other full-color, continuous tone images or when a project is not tied to a specific number of colors.

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