Back to Dye Printing Tricks & Tips
Don't give us all 457 working pages of text if you only want us to print pages 1-200 and pages 253-331. Delete the pages you don't want us to print.
Don't give us all the colors available to mankind if you are running a two- or one-color job. The longer it takes us to find which Reflex Blue you want (Reflex Blue, Pantone Reflex Blue, Reflex Blue CVC, and or Reflex Blue CVU) the longer it will take for us to run your job. Distill the number of colors down to what you want printed. Save yourself some money on the accidental imaging of extra film. Delete the colors you do not want us to print.
Don't convert Spot to Process colors if you want to run spot negatives. Manage your color palette to be made of only the colors you want us to print.
Don't convert Process Colors to Spot if you want to run process negatives. Manage your color palette to be made of only the colors you want us to print.
Don't label pages odd things for special effects. This is especially helpful if we are going to run impositions on a booklet or book. Computer software recognizes page one as page one. You can physically label it ix, or A-22 if you want, but if you are using a masterpage layout be careful not to tell your computer to label page 4 page 1 and page 1 page 2 just so you can see a reader's spread on your screen. You're big graphic artists now, you can cross the street by yourselves....
(If you are an artist who understands how to write to PostScript--then you're big enough to know NOT TO if you don't have our specific printer drivers. Especially with imposition software, if you write your own PostScript and use the wrong version of our PPD, our imagesetter will not recognize your page, orientation, bleeds, pagination, line screen, and or separation mode. Now that would be bad, right?)
Just remember that your file was once just an empty screen. Everything you added to it we also have to have.
Keystrokes are easy. If you make us a copy of your file (and giving us the only copy of your project is the best way to lose it forever) we need everything it took to create your file. We might have all the same ingredients (fonts, clip art, etc.) but just pretend that we don't. Pack everything it took to create your file on disk. Any TIFF, JPEG, GIF, EPS, or BMP we have to have in order to image your file.
Make sure all of your proofing has been done before we get the job.
Make sure all your links (or usage) are current. Remember to include fonts that may be "nested" within links within links...
If you aren't able to convert your fonts to paths/curves/outlines and you used fonts we don't have font substitution will happen. If you cannot live with this arbitrary switching of similarly named fonts (some dead on matches, some completely different), then you can purchase the font you have to have for us or use Adobe's Acrobat Distiller to electronically "embed" the font information into a PRESS worthy PDF. This is allowed under Adobe's new rules for font usage. You have to set the font you used to embed 100%. You have to use the PRESS mode (not eBook, Screen, nor Print modes). Failure to do it correctly means a whole lot of trouble if you really want your job to be what you intended.
Macintosh:
InDesign CS, 2.0
PageMaker 7.0 (6.0 & 6.5)
FreeHand 10.0 (8.0 & 9.0)
Illustrator CS, 10 (7.0)
PhotoShop CS, 7.0 (5.5)
Quark 4.04PC:
PageMaker 7.0 (6.5)
Quark 4.04
And while we don't recommend it for imaging film we also have MicroSoft Word icky old Publisher 2000.
You should run your own preflight test to check to see how many colors your job is set up for. Go to your "Print" dialog and print out each separation (ink color) of each page. If you are shocked by how many different sheets you get, imagine how much it will cost to print it! We will image each plate as well in order to run your job. If you want various spot colors to be distilled to the basic four process colors, please let us know in advance.
Create your page or file or document to be the size you want printed. If you want a business card, go ahead and start with a page that is 3.5 inches long and 2 inches tall. If you are creating a book and you want the pages to be 5.5 inches wide and 8.5 inches tall make your document be that size. Doing reader's spreads (running two pages on either half of a horizontal or landscape format) is actually counter productive. We then have to split each page up and create the correct imposition. Do you need an element of color or background to go off the page? That's bleed. Give us some extra so when the page is trimmed to size, you won't get a sliver of paper showing through.
For specifics on PageMaker documents and how to optimize them for your needs, click here. Other applications are similar.
All files can be placed on a diskette, Zip, CD, or USB device. While some programs set up special folders for fonts and images or art you do not have to segregate your various files by hand.
If you need to send a file by email send a noteice first. After you get confirmation from us, then you can try to send the entire attachment. Our email address is: dyegang@yahoo.com