Frequently Asked Questions

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Adding bleed and crop marks to your artwork will help ensure that we can trim your job neatly and perfectly, leaving a pristine end result. Crop marks allow us to see the exact size of your document and show us where to cut it, and bleed prevents white edges caused by slight paper movement during trimming.

The Safe zone the inner limit  additional 3mm inside the trim line is the inner limit where all important stuff like text, borders or images should keep within so they don't get trimmed off or look uneven.  

Scroll to the bottom of this Q&A to see a diagram to explain this.

Each design programme is different.  

There are now numerous YouTube tutorial videos that can help you.  

www.youtube.com

See below for an illustration

A PDF is a document file type (which can include images with the text) while a JPG is an image file type (which can include text on the image). Generally speaking, a PDF is a text document that is created from converting a word processing type document. A JPG is a photograph or other image.

PDFs will often be higher quality than JPEGs. This is because JPEGs compress images, leading to a loss in quality that you can't regain. Visuals saved as PDF are of very high quality and even customizable, making them the file format of choice for printers.

What is a PNG file? Portable Network Graphics files (PNGs) are compressible and like JPEGS, can handle 16 million colors. They're mostly used for web graphics, logos, charts, and illustrations, rather than high-quality photographs, because they take up more storage space than JPEGs.

Unlike the JPG, a PNG has lossless compression. It doesn't lose any of its information on compression - so that means the image quality is usually much higher (and the file size much larger) than its JPG cousin. Typically, people use PNGs for graphics (such as logos), text objects and line drawings.

Yes please, we use the industry standard 25mm on each edge to enable us to hem the banner.

What's the difference between CMYK or RGB images?  CMYK is the colours gamut used for conventional printing, and stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.  RGB is the colour gamut used to display images on computer screen, and stands for Red, Green and Blue, which is absolutely fine for social media.  

Printing with RGB instead of CMYK can have a negative impact on the quality of the print.  

Canva is a great programme, however if your using the free version it doesn't allow you to download files for printing which flatten the design and include bleeds and crops.  

Don't forget to 'attach an image' to the background if it covers the entire area, when using Canva this ensures you can save with bleed.

This link will help with any Canva queries you may have

https://www.canva.com/designschool/tutorials/

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Finished Size:  297 x 420mm 

Size with bleed: 303 x 426mm 

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF, PNG or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Safe Zone: 3mm 

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Finished Size:  210 x 297mm 

Size with bleed: 216mm x 303mm

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF, PNG or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Safe Zone: 3mm

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Finished Size:  148 x 210mm 

Size with bleed: 216mm x 154mm

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF, PNG or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Finished Size:  105 x 148mm 

Size with bleed: 154mm x 111mm

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF, PNG or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Safe Zone: 3mm

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Finished Size:  99 x 210mm 

Size with bleed: 216mm x 105mm

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF, PNG or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Safe Zone: 3mm

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Finished Size:   88 x 55mm 

Size with bleed:  91 x 61mm 

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF, PNG or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Safe Zone: 3mm 

Artwork Set Up Booklet A4

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Size with bleed: 216mm x 303mm 

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted during proofing)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Safe Zone: 3mm

File size: In total 200MB maximum

*Please note your artwork must be a single document with individual pages and not spreads. Each page should be the finished size of each book, so A4 for an A4 booklet.

Artwork Set Up A5 Booklet

Artwork Set Up

Please set up your artwork to the following specifications:

Size with bleed: 216mm x 154mm

Resolution: 300 dpi minimum

Format: PDF or JPEG

Colour: CMYK (RGB/Pantones will be converted during proofing)

Fonts: Outlined or Embedded

Bleed: 3mm

Safe Zone: 3mm

File size: In total 200MB maximum

*Please note your artwork must be a single document with individual pages and not spreads. Each page should be the finished size of each book, so A4 for an A4 booklet.

If you’re unable to amend the design yourself, there are a couple of options open to you:

1. Print with a white border

You can request that we print document with a 6mm white border to ensure a neat finish with no slivers of white or missing content.

2. Have the artwork amended by a graphic designer

A professional designer should be able to recreate or amend your existing artwork and remove any issues. If you’d like our in-house design team to take a look, let us know.

Sorry we only have a wide format printer and are unable to print individual photographs.  However, if  you have a frame and its bigger than 10 x 8inches  then please contact us for a quote.

Sorry we cannot print directly from a mobile phone.  We would need you to email us your artwork.