Our print pricing is based on artwork that is “ready to print”. In order to keep prices low and maintain quick turnaround times, we need you to help us by giving us files that meet our printing guidelines.
If you bring it artwork that doesn’t meet the guidelines, we will give you the option to fix the files yourself, or we will gladly fix them for you, but we need to charge for our time to do so. Our setup charge is $75 per hour.
General guidelines for all artwork
For any raster or “photo”? art that will be printed like TIFF and JPG – Use RGB colors at 150 dpi or higher at full size (Why? RGB is a bigger color space than CMYK, so giving us more colors to print is better than less. Our printer driver will convert from RGB to CMYK with better results than if Photoshop did the conversion. Pretty cool because the files are smaller too!)
For vector based print files: All colors should be in CMYK or pantone spot colors.
For any type of art that will be cut with our vinyl cutter: EPS vector files with fonts converted to outlines or paths.
Please design all your work at full size. Check your page setup options to make sure you are working at full size.
For special effects like drop shadows and transparent color blends, don’t set them up in the vector programs like Illustrator. The new features are really cool on screen, but even Adobe and Corel don’t recommend the new effects if you are taking your files to a service providers like us. Instead, import your file into Photoshop and add the drop shadows or transparent blends. Just be sure to set up the Photoshop document at 150-200 dpi at full size. Once the Photoshop work is done, save it as a flattened RGB Tiff file.
For more complex files, we recommend including JPEG proofs or at least a printed proof of your art. Just because it looks right on your screen, it might look different on ours.
If you want multiple copies of something like a hundred 2″ stickers, just bring us one. We will set up the copies.
If you stroke a path to make a line thicker, expand the stroke or convert it to outlines so they can print correctly. Sometimes we get files that are half size and they need to be scaled up before we print them. Usually, the stroke stays the same size and will appear way too thin once printed. By default, most programs don’t scale the stroke thickness. Once again, another reason to design at full size.
Another reason for not using strokes is that our cutter will just cut down the middle of the original path. For example: Say you wanted us to print and cut some large letters that were blue with a 10 pt stroke in green. If all you gave us was the stroked version, the printer would print the full 10 pt stroke, but the cutter would cut down the middle of the stroke, giving you only half the thickness you wanted.
The correct way to set up the file would be to go ahead and stroke the path, but convert the stroked path into an actual object. Then duplicate the outer line and make it a hairline red so we can know where the cut line should be. While you are at it, make the stroke a tad bigger so there will be a bleed for the cut file. Sound complicated? It is. Just one of the nuances of working with die-cut artwork.
We run all PCs. If you run a Mac, you can bring us PDF files and they usually work fine.
You can submit files on CD or bring in a flash drive. We can take email up to 20mb at jeff@harrisd.com
Caution – techno-geek graphic design language below. For more info about what all this means, please take a look at our graphic design primer page.
Files we accept and some notes about each type
Adobe Illustrator vector graphics file – .ai
Embed all placed images and convert fonts to outline, vector artwork needs to be spot color or CMYK
Adobe Photoshop – Good for “photo”? types of files – .psd
If you bring us the layered file, bring a flattened one too. Don’t forget to rasterize the fonts or include them with your files.
Use RGB colors – must be at least 150 dpi at full size
Adobe InDesign document – good for combinations of photos and text. – .indd
Include all placed images and convert fonts to outlines, vector artwork needs to be spot color or CMYK
Typically, exporting a PDF from InDesign works best – bring both.
PDF – Portable Document Format from Adobe Acrobat – Good for combinations of photos and text. – .pdf
Include all placed images and convert fonts to outlines, vector artwork needs to be spot color or CMYK
When creating a PDF, turn off any image compression and convert fonts to outlines.
Encapsulated PostScript vector graphics file – .eps
Embed all placed images and convert fonts to outlines, vector artwork needs to be spot color or CMYK
Corel Draw vector drawing file – .cdr
Embed all placed images and convert fonts to curves, vector artwork needs to be spot color or CMYK
TIF, Good for “photo”? types of files – .tiff
Must be at least 150 dpi at full size. Use RGB colors and LZW compression when possible
JPEG, Good for “photo”? types of files – .jpg
Must be at least 150 dpi at full size. Use RGB colors and maximum quality compression
(we don’t prefer JPEGs because the colors tend to look pixilated or show banding due to compression)
We can accept files from virtually any professional publishing and graphics software. However, we cannot accept any files from Word Perfect, Claris Works, Microsoft Works, Microsoft Word, Power Point or Publisher. If you have artwork that was created using one of these programs, please contact us to discuss an alternative solution. Most likely, we might be able to use what you have, but we will need to either re-create it or at least do some sort of file conversion at our standard design rate of $75 per hour