General Printing FAQs
Q. What is the difference between pages and leaves?
A. A leaf is a sheet of paper and a page is typically a side of paper, So a leaf of paper could be two printed pages (2pp) if double-sided or just one printed page (1pp) if single-sided.
Q. What is Bleed?
A. Ink that prints beyond the trim edge of the page to ensure it extends to the edge of the page after trimming. As there is a degree of movement when printing on any press, you should always create 3mm bleed on all edges where bleed is needed. Supplying your job without bleed may result in white lines when we trim it.
Q. What is the difference between CMYK and RGB?
A. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black - the inks our Indigo digital presses mix together to make colours on your printed job. RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue - the colours of light a computer screen mixes together to make colours on your screen.
Q. What does resolution and DPI mean?
A. All images should be 300 dpi. DPI is the amount of ink dots per inch; 300 dots per inch is the required standard for printed material. Anything below 200 dpi may not be good enough resolution for printing.
Q. Can I upload an Office file? For example a Word file.
A. Of course, you can, however, we recommend that you save your file as a pdf instead. If you create a pdf from an office program it will save your fonts, images, logos etc that you used to create the file. To do this go to 'File', 'Save As' and change the file format to PDF. If we convert your office file at our end we may not have the exact fonts, there may be elements missing or items could move due to different versions of Microsoft Office, for this reason, we will email you a pdf proof for approval. Your job will be placed on hold pending your response to proceed.
Q. How do I supply my artwork?
A. You can supply 1 pdf file with all the pages in the correct running order. For 2 versions of a double-sided business card you would supply:
Page 1 = front_version1, Page 2 = back_version1, Page 3 = front_version2, Page 4 = back_version2
Alternatively, you could supply 2 pdf files, one for each version.