How to Prepare Camera Ready Files When you prepare layouts to send to a commercial printing company, your vendor may ask you for camera-ready PDF files or native layout documents. Regardless of the format you supply, you can set up your work so it requires as little preparation as possible when it arrives at the printer. The time you spend perfecting your files pays off in the speed with which you receive proofs and see your project ship.
Defining 'Camera-ready' o
In the digital world of desktop publishing, "camera-ready" means "ready to produce." Before DTP and digital workflows, print materials began as sheets of cardboard onto which production artists attached pieces of type and graphics with a thin coating of wax or rubber cement. The type came from sheets of text produced on light-sensitive photographic paper. The graphics could include photos, inked drawings and logos. Hand-cut overlays covered continuous-tone images and areas that printed in tints, or percentages, of color. Specialized cameras produced printing plates from photographs of layout boards. To be camera-ready a job had to be complete, correct and ready to photograph.
Color Modes o
Printed materials reproduce in process or spot color, not in RGB. If you've created a project that uses spot colors -- premixed single-color inks that load into a printing press in their final color -- your layout should use only the limited color range that your job specifies. From the colors you apply to graphics you create in your layout to the photos you link to your layout file, everything in your project should be based on CMYK or spot color. To finalize your design in camera-ready form, verify that all linked graphics comply with your project specs.
Graphics & Font Files o
Without access to everything that appears in your layout, your printing vendor can't reproduce your design correctly. If you're sending a native layout file, most DTP software includes a function that collects or packages a project's graphics and font files. To create a production-ready PDF, you must embed these resources into your final file. Even if your printer has access to font files with the same names as the ones you use, they may look subtly or radically different, altering your type and even forcing your project onto additional pages. As you check your layout, look for styled type in bold or italic and verify that your typeface includes the font files that produce those styles.
Pasteboard Clutter o
If you're sending the printer your native layout file, font files and linked graphics, only what prints on each page should appear in your document. Temporarily set your document view to a smaller zoom percentage so you can see workflow remnants on the pasteboard around your active pages. Deleting these extraneous elements reduces the size of your layout file and eliminates the need to send irrelevant support files.
Bleeds o
When layout elements run all the way to the trim line of printed materials, these graphics or fills should extend at least 9 points -- 0.125 inches -beyond the final dimensions of the page. When the printer trims the project out of the large sheets of paper that run through printing presses, the ink appears to stop at the trimmed edge. Depending on the type of project you're printing and the setup your printer maintains, this extension, or bleed, may need to run even larger than 9 points, so always verify these specifications. If you set up bleeds as you put together your design, you can avoid the need to resize or reposition a photo or piece of art at the last minute when you discover it's too short or narrow to bleed.
Resolution o
On paper, low-resolution images look pixelated and blurred. Most printing companies ask you to supply bitmapped graphics at a resolution no lower than 300 pixels per inch. Vector artwork remains resolution independent unless it incorporates special effects that rely on pixels to create soft drop shadows, blurs or glows, specialized gradients or meshes. When you create a production-ready PDF, verify that you include high-resolution versions of your bitmaps with minimal file compression, retaining all the visual information in your images so they print with full clarity.
Scaling o
DTP software enables you to scale virtually every element you incorporate in your designs. That doesn't mean you should leave scaled bitmaps in place at production time. When you scale a bitmap in a layout, the program you're using doesn't resample your TIFF or JPEG; it simply treats it like a smaller, higher-resolution file. At 25 percent of actual size, a 300ppi image behaves like a 1200-ppi file. Even with low-resolution previews, every scaled image you incorporate causes your layout file size to balloon. For the most efficient layout possible, produce final versions of
your bitmapped graphics, sharpen them at their scaled sizes and relink your layout to these production-ready files.
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