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pre press perfection
Make sure your artwork prints perfectly first time.
Our step by step pre press guide will highlight
what we are looking for and offers some top tips
for ensuring perfect output for print.
HOW TO PREPARE FILES FOR LARGE FORMAT PRINT
1. If you are creating the artwork make sure you
save the file as a
PDF/X-4:2008.
Go into the
Marks and Bleed
panel and turn on
Trim Marks
- set the Offset and bleed to the
same value. e.g. 3mm
(see image)
2. Once you have created the file open it in
Acrobat.
If you don’t have Acrobat set up
correctly then do the following:
a. Open the
Tools
menu on the top left of Acro-
bat.
b. In the
Review & Approve
list select
Add - Measure
c. In the
Protect & Standardize
list select
Add -
Print Production
3. Now go back to your PDF in Acrobat and you should see the new Icons in the Right-Side
Panel. If you don’t, just toggle back into Tools again and select
Print Production
in the
Right-Side Panel and then return to your PDF.
4. Select
Output Preview
from the panel, this opens the Output Preview panel.
a.
Check
that all the
colours
you require are listed correctly.
b.
Check
by using the tick boxes that everything is on the
correct layer
.
c.
Check
nothing is
knocking out
of colours below it, e.g. cut lines.
d.
Check
that all the digital cut layers are on
separate
layers and correctly named, e.g. Cut,
Crease.
5. Close
Output Preview
and
Check
the
page sizes, bleeds, number of pages
etc.
a. You can also use the Measuring Tool to check dimensions, select Measure from the side
panel and then in the header panel use the Measuring Tools to get the dimensions you
require.
6. Once you have checked these you can now pass your files onto Production.