Someone told me my file has to bleed.  Why oh why would I want my files to bleed?  Didn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger say, “if it bleeds, you can kill it!”?

Full bleed is printing from one edge of the paper to the other without the standard borders by which most personal printers are limited. This is useful for printing brochures, posters, and other marketing materials. Often the paper is trimmed after printing to ensure the ink runs fully to the edge and does not stop short of it.  A bleed is the extra-size designed into your document which thereby allows for paper and design inconsistencies.  In other words, if the printing goes to the very edge of your 4 x 6 document, you’re safest designing the document at 4.25 x 6.25, so there’s a 1/8″ play on all four sides.

Bleeds in the USA and UK generally are 1/8 of an inch from where the cut is to be made. Bleeds in Europe generally are 3 to 5mm from where the cut is to be made.

Why?  Because there is simply no technology that allows accuracy to the millimeter.  Your printout may not be perfectly straight, your file may not be perfectly centered on the page, the large stack of paper may be a mm off between the top and the bottom of the stack… From sheet to sheet the printing press or copier will have some play, too, leaving the registration of the image slightly “off.”

When you try to cut out a photo with scissors, you most often leave a tiny slice of white border around your picture, which you frustratedly fight for the next 3 minutes.  Because you’re not that accurate.  Well, we are as accurate as technologically possible, but that’s still not perfect. If you don’t leave us any space for play, you will end up with some white borders on your photos, business cards, etc.

Sometimes we are able to create a bleed for your file, i.e. blow up the photo a bit or create a fake corner, but if your design is too complex or too tight, we may have to ask you to redesign your piece (or charge you to do it ourselves.)

Die-cuts sometimes require a 1/4″ bleed from where the page is intended to be cut; this is because of the possible movement of the paper during the die-cut procedure.

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems, and fundamentally for document exchange. (Adobe makes all the big production software also, so that adds in compatibility also.)  PDF exists to represent documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.  Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a document that includes the text, fonts, images, and vector graphics which the documents contain.  PDF is an open standard that is read and written by many programs and up to 90% of computers. 

So how do you make a PDF?  On any program, hit File: Print.  If you have a printer-looking icon called Acrobat Distiller, or something with PDF in its name, it’s probably your PDF writer.  Printing to it will create a PDF.  If it gives you any options, choose “press quality” and “300 dpi”.  Mac OSX supports PDF natively, which means you should just be able to hit File Save As PDF in most programs…

Download Instructions

InDesign is a powerful program; perhaps too powerful for most of its users.  Most files we get in InDesign format are almost unreadable because of advanced features used incorrectly, leaving empty boxes, unattached or improperly attached fonts, etc.  We can’t quite call it InDesign new to market” anymore, but it is a program that is only now gaining popularity with designers, and only so because it comes bundled with the ubiquitous and necessary Photoshop and Illustrator packages.  We use both InDesign and Quark (as well as Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Gimp, and everything else down to Microsoft Word.) 

As always, if you are submitting a file from any program, please include a PDF.  We will normally print straight from the PDF.  Nevertheless, it is always wise to include the original files in case any changes need to be made.  “Changes” doesn’t mean we will mess with your file.  But we may need to adjust the size of the bleed, remove the crop marks or bounding box, or convert the process colors you included into the Pantone colors you demanded.  If you had a designer create the file, it will always be quicker and of much more value to have us adjust it than to send it back to your freelance designer.

With InDesign, you will need to prepare your file for printing.  This will include all the ancillary files, fonts, images, etc. in one package for us.  There’s no point submitting a file to us if it doesn’t include any fonts or images!  Even if it looks fine on your screen!  Anyway, if you’re using InDesign, here is how to prepare your file:

1. From the FILE menu, choose PACKAGE. 
2. Click OK (or fill in the instructions, but print them out as well.)
3. Check “Copy Fonts (roman only)”
4. Check “Copy Linked Graphics”
5. Check “Update Graphic Links in Package”
6. Optional:  “Use Document Hyphenation Exceptions Only”
7. Optional: “Include Fonts and Links From Hidden Layers”
8. Optional: “View Report”

Save it to your Desktop.  You may want to create a new folder to put everything in.  Then, if you’re going to email or FTP it, throw the PDF in there and zip that folder and send it to us.  Otherwise, throw the folder and the PDF onto your thumbdrive or CD, and get it to Ram.  Now your part is over and you can trust your job will be perfect within a few days.

First off, if you have Quark XPress, you may not need this page.  You know that outputting to PDF is the most important thing in the world, second only to Collecting for Output to accompany your PDF in case anything ends up askew on preflight.  Here’s How:

1. FILE
2. COLLECT FOR OUTPUT
3. Don’t check “Report Only”
4. Check everything else.  “Layout,” “Linked Pictures,” “Embedded Pictures,” “Screen Fonts,” “Printer Fonts.” 
5. “Color Profiles” is optional.

If you’re emailing or FTPing, put your “press quality” PDF in the resultant folder, zip it or stuff it, then send it to us.  If you’re bringing it in on a thumbdrive or CD, same thing, you just don’t have to zip it if you don’t want to.  Just give us the resultant file and folder, and a PDF, and you’re gold. 

PS  Be sure to give your file a specific name, not just “business cards.”  Just think of how many resumes you get whenever you list a job which have the filename “resume.doc.”

Oh, we hear so many versions of this question!

• It prints fine on my $50 printer at home; why are the colors all off on your $50,000 printer?
• Why, oh, why, oh, CMY… K?
• Why doesn’t it look like the monitor?
• Why is the blue on my PowerPoint coming out purple?
• My logo is and has always been this exact shade of red.  It looks fine on your screen–right there!  Why is it a different shade when it prints out?

Okay, I’ll calm down now and tell you the answer…  Forgive me if I dilate too much in my explanation. 

Projected light is a combination of three colors: Red, Green, and Blue.  A tube-TV has big red, green, and blue bulbs which combine to make your TV image.  From the TV there are often separate red, green, and blue cables to plug into the DVD player.  Projected light is a combination of three colors, and if you shine the whole rainbow at once, you see white light.  Combinations that sum to perceived white (projected light) are called “additive” colors.

Reflected color consists mostly of four colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black.  If you put all these together it will look black.  Back in the day we said, “The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.”  These also combine to form black (but aren’t accurate enough now that we have computers.)  Color “gamuts” that combine to form black are called “subtractive” colors.

So consider if you had one painting palette of red, green, and blue; and another of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.  You “could” get the same colors out of both mixes, but it would be difficult.  That’s what we do at Ram, and one more reason those who push the big green button on the copier all day need degrees in art.  But most programs just design for one type or the other–PowerPoint is a projection program, so printing off a PowerPoint file will always be in RGB and you’ll always lose your color accuracy.  Again, I’m not saying to blame Bill Gates–blame the universal laws of physics.  If you pull your logo off your website, the color will be wrong and there’s very little anyone can do about it.

In other words, if you take a picture on an amateur uncalibrated camera, which only takes pictures in RGB; then review it and color correct it on a different uncalibrated amateur RGB monitor, then if you like it you ask Windows to randomly attempt to mix those same colors in CMYK on your uncalibrated printer; the results will be hit and miss.  (There is no such thing as an RGB printer or a CMYK monitor or camera.)  So then you play with it and play with it until it looks perfect off your printer, and are pleased with yourself.

Then you bring it to Ram, because after all, if your printer looks good then ours must look great!  Thanks for the compliment.  But remember, you had to jerry-rig your camera, monitor, and printer to get it to look like this.  At Ram everything we have is professional and calibrated daily with big expensive lasers, but therefore and by definition it won’t look like your duct-taped printer.  And we still have to go through a highly precise RGB to CMYK conversion, which will result in a rendering of the file exactly how it looks, but that may be different than you expect. 

So what can you do? 

Short answer:

• nothing, it’s just part of the game. 

Long answer:

• Give us a PDF saved as “Press Quality” (not High Quality.) 
• Convert everything to CMYK on your end as you’re building your document.  (Starting with Office 2007 you can even do this in Publisher.)
• Design downward!  Find a lovely RGB to CMYK converter on the net and use it to make everything look strategically wrong on your monitor.  (Add extra magenta into your blues, increase the contrast higher than is comfortable, etc.)
• And as always and above all, call us with questions.  If anything in this article confused you, you probably won’t master the topic before your project is due.  Oh, and higher than that, have fun!

Which programs do you accept? (also known as “Do you take ___________ files?)

Short answer: we can take most any program. Just get us what you have and we’ll run with it.

Short answer #2: If you save your file as a PDF, it doesn’t matter what program it was created in or whether we have it. We can open it. Just try to send us the original file too in case something needs to be changed.

Long answer: Certain programs are designed to ready your idea for commercial output, while other programs exist for other equally-valid purposes. For example, the core competency of Microsoft Word is writing, not layout. If you write something in Word, you can never be sure whether, on another computer, the fonts will look the same or how many words will fit on a line. Word was just never designed to precisely reproduce colors or layers of fonts. That being said, it’s a great program for writing letters and resumes and books that have few pictures. If you have a layout program such as Quark, use that. But people with Quark won’t be reading this article…

Any program can be set up to create a PDF from any file. That’s the ideal way of submitting a file to us, because the whole format was created solely to take existing files and make sure they were embedded with all the necessary features to reproduce on another computer. If you save your Word file, or Excel file, or Illustrator file, or whatever, as a PDF, it will most always look exactly the same on almost every computer. That’s why when you download an owner’s manual or flier somewhere on the internet it’s always a PDF with fonts embedded. Yes, it is possible to turn off the embedding of fonts in your PDF creator, but that’s too rare to discuss here…

To review the last two paragraphs, the key issue isn’t the content, but the supplementary files that most people never think of. It’s not whether we’ll see all the words, it’s whether we have the same font as you, or whether we have access to the picture you included in your flier. Besides a PDF, this can also be accomplished in most programs through some form of “prepare for commercial output” feature. Here are some standard examples:

1. Microsoft Word – We can open any version of Office programs. If you’re using the PC version, under File, Save As, there will be a Tools button, then a Save Options possibility. Click there and make sure you “Embed Fonts in the File.” Then make sure that whatever photos you use in your document are sent to us. So if you have a Valentine’s Day party invite with 3 little clip-art cherubim angels around the border, be sure you give us 4 files (one for the document and 3 for the cherubic pictures.) *NOTE: There is no way on the Mac to embed fonts into a Word document!* You’ll just have to give us the actual font files or design it in a font that you’re 100% sure we have, or, the easiest option, Save As PDF (but then we can’t edit it, so know that.)
2. Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, etc – pretty much the same thing as Word (see above.)
3. Adobe Illustrator – We have all versions of the Adobe Suite, including CS4. Industry standards still revolve around CS2 for the Mac. Just save as .EPS and outline your fonts. Again, you may also want to include your fonts anyway in case any changes need to be made. Be sure to include ALL the fonts.
4. Adobe Photoshop – Again, we run CS4 but mostly receive files downsaved to CS2–that’s simply the current standard. Whatever the downsave, include the unlayered PSD file and all fonts; because once you flatten the image, the text will rasterize and can’t be blown up or edited anymore. It’s incredibly common that people design beautiful things on a flier, give us a file, and when we open it the file is only saved as 4″ wide at 100 dpi RGB. Or–this is really common–their “designer” only has experience in web design, and saves everything in 72 dpi RGB. All your work needs to be at least 300 dpi at full size, and CMYK. If it’s not in CMYK we’ll have to convert it and we can’t be responsible for the (in)accuracy of the resultant file.  If elements are completely vectorized through Illustrator or the like, include those supporting files too.
5. Adobe InDesign – File, Package will compile the files we need.
6. Quark Xpress – We mostly run 6.52 on the Mac. File, Collect for Output will include everything and warn you what you’re missing. Be sure to include ALL the fonts (it may complain about some.)
7. JPGs, TIFs, BMPs, GIFs – nothing to worry about with a photo, just know the files need to be at least 300 dpi at full size and cannot be unflattened by us. Normally if someone’s submitting a JPG that didn’t come off their camera it’s because they gleaned it off the internet (albeit often their own site), and therefore is only saved at 72 dpi. And, again, printing is CMYK while your monitor is RGB–so if you’re picky about color, you will always be better off in life defining a color profile and using CMYK (or if you prefer lab color or Adobe RGB.)
8. BLUEPRINT FILES – Blueprints should come as PDFs to size and scale –but there are still reasons to submit requests in other sizes.  We print in ratio not scale.  When making special size requests please refer to either sheet size (18×24 etc.) or percentage ratio, ie 50% etc. We can print b/w blueprints up to 36×48″ and color options even larger. And we don’t use cheap paper, either, and study after study shows that makes all the difference.

Again, we (unofficially) accept any format, and most days receive files in PageMaker, WordPerfect, Visio, iWork Pages, and binary code written straight onto napkins.

This was a lot of information. Please call with any questions.