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Have you ever been in a situation when your tried to bang your head on a wall or smash it with a brick when you sent your latest design for printing and it didn’t come out to be exactly the way you fancied? Well, I have and am sure a number of you must have been as well. From my past experience, I have learnt that in most of the cases, the fault is on the designer’s end rather than the printer. There are a number of things which designers ignore while sending their designs for printing, and the result is obvious; the printed design does not match the design on your screen.

In the following paragraphs, I am explaining a few guidelines on how to setup your designs ready for print keeping in consideration most of the industrial print standards. Hope you find them useful.

Setting the Mode (RGB/CMYK)

We all have eyes. Right? Now, think it this way: The printer has eyes as well, and it recognizes colors in their true sense only in CMYK mode. CMYK stands for C=Cyan, M=Magenta, Y=Yellow, K=Black and this is the standard color mode for printing. The other mode is RGB (R=Red, G=Green, B=Blue) and is used for graphic design/web. The color shift between RGB and CMYK is not much but it can affect your print design a lot if you want precise custom colors on your design, especially on backgrounds. Here is an example of colors of hex value of #66cc66 and #ccff33 both in RGB and CMYK side by side:

Notice the difference? This is one of the major causes of color mismatch in your original and printed design. Almost all of the designing softwares support both of these modes and you can choose between them. Here is how you can set the color mode in your document setup in Photoshop (File -> New):

There are times when you forget to set CMYK in the start of making a new document in Photoshop and in the middle of making your design, you realize your folly. There is still a way out. Simply go to the “Image” tab and change the color mode.

As far as Adobe Illustrator is concerned, it provides you the option of creating a print or a web document before creating one. Choose your desired setting.

Setting the Resolution

In the printing world, resolution is measured in dpi (Dots Per Inch). The greater the number of dots, the better the result. A normal printer requires you to set the image resolution in at least 300 dpi for good results. The default setting in Photoshop for this field is 72 which is good for web graphics but certainly not for printing purposes. Keeping this resolution will result in blurred images in the final result. Make sure you set it to 300 or higher before working on the print design.

If you do not set the resolution of your images high enough, the printer is after all going to stretch your image to 300 dpi or higher which will result in quality loss of your graphics.

Setting the Text

Whenever you need to add text to your print design, it is recommended that you use a vector program such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Adobe Photoshop deals with pixels and no matter how much high you set the resolution of your images, there are chances that they end up blurred in the printed version, especially when the font size is small. As far as vector programs are concerned, they deal with ratios rather than pixels, which means that no matter how much you stretch your design, there would be no quality loss. So, after you have completed your design in Photoshop, you can import the entire document in any of the vector programs and add the text (See the next heading). Alternatively, you can export the text to Photoshop from the vector programs. Import/Export options are usually found in the “File” Tab of the main menus.

Setting the Font in Vector Programs (Illustrator, Freehand etc.)

I recently designed my visiting cards and took them to the printing press. I used Adobe Illustrator for the design and saved the document in “ai” (default illustrator format) and “pdf”. Everything was looking fine until I checked it on the printing press PCs. All the fonts in the document had been substituted with different typefaces. The reason was that the fonts I used weren’t available with the printer and were therefore replaced. To avoid a situation like this, you can follow these steps:

• Adobe Illustrator: Convert all of your text to outlines. This will ensure that your fonts are dealt as vector paths/objects.
• Adobe Photoshop: If you are sticking with Photoshop for adding text, it is better to rasterize the font. This will have a similar effect like the outlines in Adobe Illustrator, except that you get a pixelated version.

Here is how you convert your text to outlines in Adobe Illustrator (First select the Text with the Selection Tool (V):

If you are working in Photoshop, here is how you rasterize the text:

However, make sure you carry out the above steps only after you are all done; because after the implementation of these steps, you won’t be able to change the text. So, it is advisory to keep the font files that you have used in the document with you in case you need to amend the text later.

Outlining the Text

It is advisory to make a thin outline around your fonts. This will turn all the fonts into paths and therefore, when the file is opened somewhere else, the program will recognize the text as a shape rather than a type. Outlines can be created in vector programs such as Illustrator. A 0.25 pt around the text will do.

Plain Black vs. Rich Black

There are a number of versions for a single color. Same is the case with Black. When using Black color in a larger area in print design, set the appropriate values for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Simply setting the value of K=Black at 100 won’t make it Rich Black. Instead, it would show a grayish color. The normal settings for Rich Black are C: 75, M: 68, Y: 67, K: 90. In many programs including Illustrator, simply clicking on the black swatch results in C: 0, M: 0, Y: 0, K: 100 which is actually “plain black” and not “rich black”. It is advisory that you use Rich Black only if it has to be applied on a large font size or a large patch of black. For smaller text, plain black will do.

Apart from this, there are two other variations of black known as “cool black” with C=60, M=40, Y=40, K=100 and warm black with C=40, M=60, Y=40, K=100.

Adding appropriate bleed area

Bleed is the area which is extended beyond the actual printing dimensions of the document. This is just a very minor part which is cut after the design has been printed. Any design that touches the boundary of your document requires a bleed area. It is very crucial in designing stuff like cards, brochures, booklets, etc. Make sure that you add some bleed area to your document. Normally, a bleed area is anywhere between 1/8″ to 1/4″ (around .125 inch). For example, you need to print a business card of dimensions 3.5 x 2 inches. For this purpose, you will need to have a document size of around 3.75 x 2.25 inches. You would be working in 3.5 x 2 inch area to make sure that your design work is not cut off in the printed version. No one would like to have his or her name cut off from a business card. The safe zone for text is at least 5-6 mm away from the edge of the design.

In Photoshop or Illustrator, if you wish to add a bleed area, it is good to add guides in your document. While designing in Photoshop, set your document size along with the bleed area. Let’s say we need a printed card of size 3.5 x 2 inches. We would set the document size to 3.75 x 2.25 inches. When the document is open, activate the ruler (Ctrl + R). It will help you determine your actual working area. Create a new Layer (Shift+Ctrl+N). Now to determine your proper safe zone, duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J). When you press this command, you can set the values of “Width” and “Height” in the top bar. Set the Width to 3.5 in (make sure you add the proper unit; in this case, in=inches) and Height to 2 in. Apply the transformation by hitting enter. This is now your safe working zone. If you wish to add guides, simply press “Ctrl” and click the thumbnail of the layer in the “Layers” panel. It will make a selection of the working area. Drag and snap the guides from the ruler to the selection area. To deselect, press “Ctrl+D”.

Creating a proof

Before sending out the actual document to the printer, print out a hard copy of the design on any standard paper so that you can have an idea of how the design would look like when printed. It is better to mention the size etc. for the document on the hard copy proof and send it along with the design to the printer. If there are multiple sides or folds of your design, mention it with proper labeling.

Scaling down the proportions

If the design that needs to be printed is too large (for example, dimensions in a couple of feet), it is likely that your system would give up and come to a halt while applying multiple effects. This is very common with Photoshop as it deals with pixels. In such cases, you can scale down the proportions of the document but enter a comparatively larger value for dpi. Suppose, you need to design a bill-board design of around 30 x 15 feet. Instead of converting feet into inches and entering 300 dpi for resolution, you can choose to design on 30 x 15 inches but choosing the resolution at around 500 or 700 dpi. This would help you work on the design faster.

Mention the size

Always remember to mention the size of your design to the printer. It is a good practice to name the file as its size (Dimensions for horizontal x Dimensions for vertical).

Spell Check

Last, but not the least, always double check your document for any spelling mistakes, punctuation errors etc. Trust me, I have seen designs ruining the whole concept just because of a small typo!

Feel free to add more tips.

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