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Hey everyone. I hope you’ve had a good holiday period and enjoying being back at work, studying, or whatever it is you do. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to write a post on this topic for some time now, so here it is.

After working in the design industry for a wee while now, I’ve come to learn so much even in my first job. The most important being how to get documents ready for print, commonly known as Pre–Press. Now a lot of printers have their own requirements, techniques, and templates that they use for printing your work, and it is a very good idea to figure out what these are early on. If you create a file in Creative Suite 5 and they aren’t even up to date with their software they wont even be able to print it. So get the basic stuff out of the way first. Does the printer require a PDF (most will) or do they want working files as well (with outlined or Open Type fonts?). Once you know what you need to supply, here’s a list of important things to check before sending your artwork off to print.

• If your document has black in it (which it will 99% of the time), make sure you  know if this needs to be ’100k Black’ (C: 0 M: 0 Y: 0 K: 100), or a ‘Rich Black’. The difference being, 100k black is purely that, just black ink, no colour. Rich black is made of of anywhere between 30-80% CMY(K) as well giving it a much vibrant ‘punch’ as it were. When making this decision, be wary of what kind of stock you are going to use. Rich black for fine type is a bad idea (for offset printing). Any slight misregistration of the plates and you have blurry type.
• Remove any unused colour swatches. This can avoid wasted ink and a number of other problems.
  
• Turn Over-Printing OFF. This will give you a more accurate printing result on anything that is placed over the top of another image.
  
• Outline all of the fonts and text you have created. I can’t stress this enough. You have  a huge font library as a designer and nobody else is going to have all the fonts you have, even the printer. So Outline them to avoid any issues with the display of your fonts. This makes life a lot easier for everyone. *Note, be sure to ‘Save As’ once proceeding past this point, if you need to make changes to the document its a lot easier to have access to an ‘Open Font’ file, not an outlined one. OR; you can just use a custom transparency flattener to outline as you export your document as a PDF.
  
• Try not to use type smaller than 5pt. Its just not readable at anything less than that.
  
• Flatten any types of images you have into either JPEG or TIF (preferably TIF for a quality result). Remove any Alpha Channels. Do not embed PSD’s into your PDF’s. Any placed vector or AI artwork ideally needs to be saved as an EPS.
  
• Always have any image you place into your document cropped and resized to the correct resolution and dimensions as it is going to be. Do not scale images, at all. Images should be no less than 300DPI for print (anything higher than this is unnecessary in most cases).
  
• Ink density is important. Learn about it. You can see this in the ‘Info’ panel in InDesign. 240-260% is ideal for Newspapers, 300-350% is great of rich blacks and colour intensive adverts in magazines etc. Anything over 400% you should avoid. A high ink density and heavy rich black can cause problems with drying, especially on large print runs.
  
• Images for print should ALWAYS be in CMYK. Never print anything that is in RGB. If you need to do so, convert it to CMYK first. (The RGB colour space is used only for on screen and in particular, the web). Be sure to convert any SPOT colour swatches to CMYK.
  
• Check that your document has the basics, does it need Bleed? Trim marks or Margins? Registration Marks? This is dependent on the printing method and stock being used, binding method, folding etc.
  
• If you’re using InDesign, which you should be. InDesign CS5 and newer has one of the most helpful tools yet. ‘Pre-Flight’. Turn this on. Play with the preferences and use it religiously whilst creating your documents and before exporting them for print. This tool is invaluable.
  
• Always print and proof your work. You will always miss something. Show someone else your work. Let them read it. When you look at the same thing for too long you start to miss things.
  
• But most of all, create a good relationship with your printer. They will appreciate you doing so, and be willing to give you good rates in return for bringing them work on a regular basis. Learn from them, and they will teach you well.

There are a lot of things in that list that I never knew about during my study and I can’t believe I was never thoroughly taught it to be honest. If you’re a student, print this and highlight each step. Its honestly some of the best information you could teach yourself. If there is something vital I have missed, please comment below and I will add it to the list. I’m only human and forget things just like you.