You have a great design for your business cards or poster, but the printer asks for “a high-resolution PDF with bleed.” Don’t panic: here’s what that means, and how to avoid surprises when your job comes off the press.<\/p>\n
In almost every case, the best file to send is a PDF<\/strong>. It keeps fonts, images and layout exactly as you intended, no matter which computer opens it. Professional software (InDesign, Illustrator, Affinity) has an export preset for print, often called PDF\/X. Use it if you have it.<\/p>\n What about other formats?<\/p>\n If your background colour or an image touches the edge of the page, it needs to extend about 3 mm (1\/8 inch) past each edge. Cutting is never perfect to a tenth of a millimetre: without bleed, you may get a thin white line along the edge.<\/p>\n On the other hand, keep your text and logo at least 3 mm inside the trim line. Otherwise they may get cut off.<\/p>\n For print, an image should be about 300 dpi<\/strong> at its final size. An image copied from a website (often 72 dpi) will look blurry or pixelated once printed, even if it looks perfect on screen.<\/p>\n Your screen displays colour in RGB (light), while the printer uses CMYK (ink). Some colours that look very bright on screen, such as an electric blue or a neon green, can’t be reproduced exactly with ink. Set up your file in CMYK to avoid shifts, and remember that no two screens show colours exactly the same way.<\/p>\n Make sure fonts are embedded in the PDF (a good export preset does this automatically) or converted to outlines. Otherwise, the printer may see a substitute font.<\/p>\n Before printing, always ask for a proof, and actually read it. That’s when you catch the typo in the phone number or the outdated logo. Once 500 cards are printed, it’s too late.<\/p>\n If this all sounds technical, that’s normal. We handle the design, then prepare a file that meets the printer’s requirements: bleed, margins, colours and resolution. You approve the proof, then order your printing in a few clicks on Onewayprint<\/a>, our online print shop, with shipping across Canada.<\/p>\n See our design pricing on the Graphic design<\/a> page, or write to us<\/a> to have your file checked before you send it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The right format, bleed, resolution and colours: everything to check before sending your file to print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized-en-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avokadodesign.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
5 things to check before sending<\/h2>\n
1. Bleed<\/h3>\n
2. Safety margin<\/h3>\n
3. Image resolution<\/h3>\n
4. Colours: CMYK rather than RGB<\/h3>\n
5. Fonts<\/h3>\n
The proof: your last chance to fix things<\/h2>\n
The easy way: let us prepare the file<\/h2>\n