View our guidelines in PDF (right-click and Save-As to download)

File submission

Please do not e-mail us files. If your file is less than 100 MB, use the send file page. If it is more than 100 MB, we recommend burning the file to CD or DVD and mailing it to us. If this isn't possible, please contact us to arrange another method.

Compressing your files first will shorten the time it takes to upload a file. If you are submitting native-application files such as InDesign or Quark, you must include all fonts and linked images.

File types and settings

Our preferred file submission format is Adobe PDF. PDF files need to be created within certain guidelines in order to print at a high level of quality.

We also accept native files from Adobe InDesign, Quark XPress, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Publisher, Excel, Word and Powerpoint. We accept all common bitmap image formats, such as TIFF, JPG, and BMP. Some notes on format and quality:

• Quark files will be converted to InDesign and we cannot guarantee the integrity of text flow or transparency. We require customers to sign off on a printed proof before we will print a file that has gone through any conversion process.
• If you are submitting Adobe Illustrator files, please convert all fonts to outlines.
• Microsoft Office applications are not press-ready applications. Printed quality of images and color matching cannot be guaranteed when we are printing Microsoft Office documents.
• Any images in color spaces other than CMYK will be converted to CMYK in prepress. We cannot guarantee color consistency when conversion is necessary. When RGB, LAB, or PANTONE colors are converted to CMYK, colors shift and change. We are not responsible for the results of color conversion and require proofing before print. The best solution is for you to convert your colors to CMYK before file submission so that you can see what the colors will look like.

Color profiles for our equipment are available upon request. Note that we cannot provide technical assistance on how to install or utilize color profiles.

Layout, size, and bleed

For any artwork that bleeds off the edge of the page, we require a 1/8 inch bleed (.125") around all four sides. This means the artwork must extend .125" beyond the edge of your piece.

Please don't "do-it-yourself" with imposition. If your finished piece is a quarter-page flyer, for example (5.5x4.25), don't set it up 4-up on a letter sheet and then submit it. Please submit the actual 1-up artwork.

PDF settings

We use Adobe Acrobat 8. The settings you use when creating PDF files can have an enormous effect on print quality. For optimal printing, we recommend the following settings:

• Downsampling OFF for Color, Grayscale, and Monochrome images.
• Compression set to ZIP for Color and Grayscale, CCITT Group 4 for Monochrome.
• All fonts included
• Color management OFF (unless you have our color profiles).
• If you convert all colors to CMYK, you can use the U.S. WEB COATED (SWOP) v2 profile.

We can also provide you with our PDF .joboptions file so that you can simply set Distiller to use our pre-set profile. For software (such as Adobe Pagemaker) that can utilize printer PPD files, we can provide equipment-specific PPDs as well.

Other notes

Bitmap images should be at least 266 dpi for optimal print quality. Graphics that are cut-and-paste from other documents or saved from web pages are usually 72dpi and will look quite pixelated when printed. If you are supplying photos from a digital camera, we recommend the highest quality setting that your camera supports, and a minimum of a 3 megapixel camera for high quality images.