Desing & Prepress
A great printed product starts with a flawless file.
While design, prepress and printing can be viewed as separate areas, they are all intertwined elaborate tasks. We are here to walk you through them.
KIP will check supplied files for technical errors, if any KIP will inform you and provide advice to correct them.
For fast turn around times KIP recommends to pay special attention to your art work & specifications provided, this may be the decisive reason to delay production.
Here are a few things you'll need to know
before you send us your artwork.
Tips & Guidelines [PDF File Download]
Accepted File Types
- Print-ready files in: Acrobat PDF documents (.pdf), Adobe InDesign (.indd), Illustrator (.ai), Encapsulated PostScript (.eps), Photoshop (.psd), Quark Xpress 6.5 (.qxd).
- Standard Image File Formats: gif, jpg, tif, eps or png (some limitations may apply).
- We not guarantee high-quality output from MsOffice documents like: Word, Excel or Powerpoint (some limitations may apply).
- Always save or export your file(s) as PDF to use as reference and include in package.
- Create art work scaled at a 100% and 1-up, we will do our own imposition arrangement to meet our production requirement.
- For jobs that are printed front and back or are 2 pages or more like brochures, instruction manuals and booklets, these must be submitted in a multi-page file format accompanied by a Single Page Spread PDF file in the proper sequence required (Outside front Cover is page 1, inside front Cover is page 2, etc.).
- Document Color Mode needs to be CMYK(Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), not RGB(Red, Green, Blue).
- If the job is 1 ink only, then only 1 color should be used in the art work and any percentage of that same color may be used if necessary.
- In a multicolored job any Process or Spot Color according to Pantone Matching System(PMS) formula guides may be used, remember that a printing plate will be generated for every process colors and/or spot colors used in the art work. Consider that this will increase the number of inks as well as the price.
- When a job is 1 color, regardless of Process or Spot color required you may use Black, but make sure to include a description in your specification of the exact ink color the job will be printed with according to PMS.
- Important: Please note that KIP can not guarantee that the color of your art work printed on our presses will match output from a conventional non-calibrated printer, system, monitor or any other method other than the one coming from an Advanced Digital Color Proofing System.
- Include Trim Marks on PDF for Reference only.
- Registration Marks and/or Color Bars are not necessary, we will include our own according to our production needs.
- Include 0.125” bleeds on the edge of your artwork when necessary to ensure proper cutting. If the metric system is used for the overall dimension of the art work, you may change this to 3mm bleeds instead.
- When possible allow 0.125” of safe margin inside of cutting area for text.
- When possible on single page layouts convert text to outlines (fonts to curves).
- Make sure there are no hidden characters or stray points in your art work.
- In the case of a multi-page layout converting text to outlines may produce a very large file. Instead include all fonts used in your layout in a separate folder, another folder for Links (images), along with your art work, PDF for reference and specifications. Then generate a compressed package.
- Embedding fonts on a file is no good when having to do imposition arrangement as per our production requirements. Always include fonts.
- Make sure to not use lines or outlines of less than 0.25pt thick. Otherwise they may not appear on the printed job.
- The same File Preparation guidelines apply when generating Links, consider Standard Image File Formats, Color Modes and Fonts.
- Always remember to include Links (images) used in your layout that are not embedded to the main design file, place them in a folder along with fonts folder, art work, PDF for reference and specifications.
[PDF File Download]
Where possible we will do our best to work a way of outputting your file.
Please call to discuss or contact our design team: [miriam.ojeda@kiplabel.com]