Your image is an asset and your stationery and printed materials provide your potential customers the first look at your Company. People who endeavour to produce their publications or graphic design work on their own computer can often be successful. However, depending on time or ability, you may need to hire someone or delegate some of this tasks.
- Fonts: Fonts are art elements for all practical purposes. True Type or Adobe Type 1 Fonts are the industry accepted standard for post Script output. The use of non-True Type and other forms of fonts frequently will halt or complicate output of your files. Keep a list of fonts used in the document and in the artwork you used to create support files for the documents. To select font size or type size, avoid smaller then 6 point. In case of your reverse types, avoid the types too small or delicate, to make reverse readable.
- Colour: The Printing process depends only two colour models, CMYK (process colours) and Pantone ( spot colour ). Please make sure that all colours you are sending are based on these two models only. Images and art using RGB colour have to be converted to one of these models before a file can be imaged. Avoid Colour pallets that do not confirm with the commercial printing process. This includes software programs that have vaguely named colours like “sky blue” or “olive green”.
- Page Set up: Create page based on exact size for output. Bleeds: Please do not assume the extra space to allow for bleeds. Bleeds extend into the area that will be trimmed in the binding process. Do not select default page size like “Letter” or “tabloide” to fulfill the requirement for a bleed.
- Resolution of Scan: Make sure that all scanned images are at 300 dpi when placed at 100% of out put. Page Layout Programs: Page layout programs are the backbone of desktop publishing. If you only get one program to start, it should be one that can handle all the text and taburlar copy that is expected. Although drawing application can handle text, they are inefficient when large amount of text are to be used. The two programs mostly used for page layout are Adobe’s In Design and Quark Press. These two do an excellent job of handling text and importing graphics.
- Graphic Illustration Programs: There are the drawing programs. They let you create and edit vector based illustration and logos. The two programs mostly used for drawing are Adobe Illustration and Macromedia Free Hand. The file generated from these programs can be saved in near native application format, or be exported into Encapsulated Post Script (EPS) for placement into a Page Layout Program.
- Image Manipulation Programs: These programs allow you to edit scans and to draw bitmapped artwork. The program mostly used for photo and bitmap editing is Adobe Photoshop. The file generated from photo editing programs can be saved in there native application format , or be exported into EPS or Tag Image File Format (TIFF) for placement into a Page Layout Program.
- Postscript, Acrobat Distiller and PDF: Postscript and PDF are closely related. Postscript is often used to produce PDF files for printing.
- PDF: PDF is file format used to represent a document independently of application software, hardware and operating system used to produce PDF files for printing.
- Proofing: Once the Desktop publishing is complete, you should carefully proof your publication once final to make sure it is exactly what you want.
Important DTP Steps for Re-verification:
- Use only Postscript Type-1 fonts. Do not mix True Type with Postscript Type-1 fonts. 2.Convert Type to graphics in EPS files.
- Avoid “nested” EPS files. Copy and past elements from one EPS file to another, instead of using import of place functions.
- Avoid large solid areas in your design.
- All scans should be saved as CMYK or Grayscale in TIFF format. Do not use RGB image or JPEG’s.
- Make sure that all of your pantone colours are converted to process CMYK.