Industry info and jargon

Digital Printing or Litho?

Digital laser printing is a cost effective method for short run and variable data printing and direct mail.
Quantities from 1 to 999 are usually best printed digitally for best value, however there maybe limitations with artwork which is printed to the edge. For quantities of 1000 and above of exactly the same file we usually print on conventional litho presses.


VAT

Many printed products, such as flyers, leaflets and brochures, are exempt from VAT. read more


What is Resolution?

Resolution refers to the dots of ink or electronic pixels that make up a picture, whether it is printed on paper or displayed on-screen. The term DPI (dots per inch) is one measure of resolution. Other initials you may encounter that refer to resolution are PPI (pixels per inch), SPI (samples per inch), and LPI (lines per inch). The more little dots that are used (up to a point) the clearer the picture and the larger the size of the graphic file.
Remember - artwork and images should be 300dpi at the actual size to be printed.


RGB or CMYK?

Everything that you see on your computer screen is created out of the colours Red, Green and Blue - RGB. They work together to create bright, vibrant and vivid colours. Full colour printing uses Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black - CMYK - to create more colours, contrasts, tones and half-tones.
If you are sending an artwork file created in Publisher, Photoshop or one of the common graphics packages you need to change your artwork from RGB to CMYK.


Printing Pictures

Pictures found on the web are usually GIF's which come from a graphics construction known as Bitmaps. GIF's are design for viewing on screen so there are limitations when printing them. Bitmap images are made of small dots known as pixels (usually only 72ppi or pixels per inch) to print a clear image it should be 300ppi, otherwise known as high resolution. Therefore images created for use on websites are not suitable for printing – the print quality will be poor and will look fuzzy or pixellated.

·       The best graphics for printing are TIF and JPEG or from a PDF
·       Try to ensure your graphics image is supplied at the actual size for printing at 300dpi


Digital Photographs

Fortunately you can change the print size of digital photos... usually with little or no loss in quality. If you want to do this, look in your photo editing software for an "Image Size," "Resize," "Print Size," or "Resample" command. When you use this command you will be presented with a dialog box where you can change pixel dimensions, print size, and resolution.


About Bleed

Bleed refers to printing all the way to the edge of the page. If you have images or backgrounds that you want to print right to the edge of the paper you must design your job larger than the final finished trimmed size. Please ensure there is 3mm bleed all round the actual finished print, i.e. save the page with 6mm added to each measurement (i.e. for A4 usually 210mm x 297mm, save as 216mm x 303mm). Crop marks may be included. If it is not saved in this format, we will not be able to use it as artwork and if there are any changes to the job, you may have to amend and re-supply the artwork.