Artwork Info

At CheapLeaflets we specialise in printing orders made through our Website, www.cheapleaflets.co.uk but are happy to accept printing orders by Email, by Post or even delivered by hand.

We like to think of our relationship as a partnership and, as with any partnership, a great outcome depends on partners working together. Please check the Artwork guidance notes on the following pages which will ensure that your work proceeds quickly and efficiently to a successful outcome to the benefit of everyone.

Below is a selection of technical information which you may find useful when creating your file. One common mistake is not to allow for bleed, so please have a look through these if you are not sure, or call 020 8688 6133 for further help.

Images, background colours and fills which are intended to print to the trimmed edge of the page should be extended 3mm beyond the page to give a 'bleed' (to allow for tolerances in the cutting process). Text, boxes and other areas you need on your finished job should ideally be 5mm in from the edges of the page.

Text should be inset 5mm from the trimmed edge.	Images should bleed beyond the trimmed edge.

For Full Colour printing at Cheap Leaflets we would strongly recommend our A1 Printed Colour Swatch Sheets which are printed on the same presses as we use to print our Full Colour Printing. They give a very accurate impression of how colours will print on your finished job.

The sheets have swatches of more than 1000 Pantone equivalent colours and their CMYK constituent percentages. We have two sheets available, one printed on Gloss Art material and the other on 100gm letterhead stock.

NB: The Cheap Leaflets A1 Printed Colour Swatch Sheets are intended to be used for Full Colour Printing only. For Spot Colour printing we recommend the Pantone® Colour Formula Guide.

Alternatively send us a chip of the Spot Colour(s) required and we will try to match it as closely as possible and advise you of the Pantone® colour(s) used.

We aim to produce consistent colour, however, the large range of variables associated with Full Colour Printing means we are unable to guarantee absolute accuracy of Colour Match.

We strongly recommend using the Cheap Leaflets Colour Swatch Sheets

There are a large number of variables which can affect the colour produced in Full Colour Printing. Simply looking at the appearance of colours on a monitor - especially if no monitor calibration has been carried out - is unlikely to produce predictable printed results.

In just the same way an un-calibrated desktop printer, such as a laser or inkjet may well produce very different colours to those produced on a professional printing press.

It is much better to choose and use colours from printed swatches since these give an accurate representation of what the finished result will be.

Pantone® limited are a company which is respected

For most printing conventional colour made up of cyan, magenta, yellow and black is quite acceptable. Where extra vibrancy and impact is needed Hexachrome maybe the answer. In the Hexachrome process the normal cyan, magenta, yellow and black colours of conventional printing are supplemented with orange and green. This means a much greater range of Pantones can be reproduced accurately, and pictures look much more vibrant and life-like.

There are currently no economical ways of proofing Hexachrome. We would always recommend a small print run to 'prove' the artwork before a large Hexachrome job is printed

Please make sure that your art/design package supports Hexachrome and exports to a printable file

This image represents conventional CMYK printing	This image represents Hexachrome printing

Metal FX® is a process which allows any number of metallic colours to be incorporated in to a conventional CMYK print job. An ultra opaque fast drying silver is applied in various tints in the areas to be metallisized and tints of CMYK inks are applied on top to produce the metallics. The eye-catching effects that can be achieved are possible without the excessive extra cost normally associated with process plus spot colour print.

This is achieved with just one pass through the press.

The first stage of the process is to print a base of opaque Metal FX® Metallic Silver ink.

Please Note: The Metal FX® process is most effective on Gloss Art Paper. Whilst good results can also be achieved on Matt Art (Business Cards) or (Handouts) the results are less predictable. There are currently no economical ways of proofing Metal FX®. We would always recommend a small print run to ‘prove’ the artwork before a large Metal FX® job is printed.

Then the CMYK element of the image is printed over the top.

Full Colour printing (Process Printing) is a printing technique widely used today. This process allows you to produce nearly every colour under the rainbow.

The process involves separating files to be printed in to four color components: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key, also called black. The color separation is known as color screening, this is a generally a digital process. A separate print plate will be made for each color. Each plate is created as a halftone, meaning that the color is separated into a series of tiny dots. In areas where there is very little colour, the dots will be small and spaced well apart. In areas of colour strong, the dots will be larger, and may have no space in between them.

Each plate is printed separately and overlaid over the previously printed ink. When all four plates have been printed, the result is a color image. The small dots on each individual plate will come together to create a complete color image, although they can still be seen with the aid of a magnifying glass. If the plates are not properly aligned during the printing process, the result is a misregistered image which is blurry and illegible.

You'll need a Pantone swatchbook to accurately pick process colours. Keep in mind that not all spot colours translate well to process colours.

Drilling will place an hole through your artwork, we drill to a diameter of 3mm. 3.5mm or 6mm. Drilling would be suitable if your finished artwork was to be ring bound or possibly require hanging via a tag or ring.

Gloss lamination gives your finished printing a shiny covering to the choosen face. The Gloss Lamintaion prevents you from actually writing on the surface with a ball point pen but is great for the fronts of business cards to give a bright and and colour enhancing professional finish to the finished product.

Matt lamination gives your finished printing a soft 'satin' finish to the choosen face that is really smooth to the touch. The Matt Lamintaion prevents you from actually writing on the surface with a ball point pen but is great for the fronts of business cards to give a feel of quality to the print.

Creasing

A strong permanant crease can be put into your finished printed product that allows them to be folded either by a folding machine or by hand. Heavier stocks require a crease before folding.

Folding

Folding allows you convert a flat printed sheet into a pamphlet, tentcard (one fold), z-fold (two folds) leaflet and many other applications. Lighter stocks can be simply folded by our folding machine, heavier stocks may require a crease and fold to complete the application correctly.

Z-Fold	Roll Fold

Round cornering can be used to 'round' the corners of a printed sheet, they would most commonly be used on business cards to give smoothed corners to the card. Round cornering is available in 3mm or 10mm

Perforating the printed artwork allows detachable tear off sections on your artwork. Possible uses are for return slips on mailers, tear-off vouchers and tear-off tickets.

More than one perforation can be put on the finished print, in straight lines only limited by the size of the printed product.

Important Information

We make an optional charge to carry out extensive 'Pre-print checking' of your job. In our experience the checks we carry out pick up potential problems before print.

We would most strongly recommend that you allow us to carry out a Pre-print check because then your job will be carefully reviewed by an experienced designer and checked by our proof readers prior to print.

Before sending your job please make sure that the artwork is centred within the selected document size. Should your job be double sided then a 2 page pdf will need to be supplied with the artwork central on the page.

During Pre-print checking we check:

• Job Geometrics and Backing up
• CMYK Conversions
• That all elements of the job are CMYK (RGB and Pantone colours may not print as expected).
• Bleed and Quiet Area
• Picture and text quality
• Colour consistency
• We also carry out a rigorous proof reading exercise which, whilst not guaranteed to pick up every error, has proved a 'lifesaver' many times in the past where embarrassing mistakes have been spotted.

Please note: if you deselect Pre-print checking your job will not be looked at and will go through our automated pre-press system. It will not be seen by 'human eyes' before it is on press by which time it will either be too late, or very expensive, to correct!

We are happy to take your files by email and can accept quite large files on our email system but due to the restraints of some email systems, it may be more practical to upload your file to out FTP server. File uploading is simple and quick, please let us know you would like to use this system and we will set you up with a username and password in no time, all we ask is that you let us know once your file is uploaded either by email or phone.

We recommend compressing your files before sending them as this not only makes the upload faster but also more reliable, especially for the Mac, since important hidden files are then included automatically.

Free trial versions of excellent compression programmes are available: visit: www.pkware.com for PKzip which is best for the PC and www.stuffit.com/mac/deluxe for Stuffit which is designed for Mac.

We can, if necessary, accept files sent on a wide range of 'hard' media as well as via email and FTP upload.

The media we can accept is 31/2" Floppy Disc, Iomega Zip drives, CDs/DVDs Recordable and Re-recordable.

We can also take files from an unsupported drive if you send us the media and the drive (we will return them with the completed job).

Also due to the high cost of postage and the low value of media we no longer return media unless specifically requested. Where media is to be sent back we may make a small charge for carriage.

We use the very latest Adobe PDF Rip in our Prepress department and our workflow is based on working with files in PDF format. Ideally you should send your files to us in this format. The PDF should be prepared at press quality.

Alternatively we can accept files in flattened Tif (Tiff) or Jpg (Jpeg) format. The files should be at the correct size for print. The disadvantage of sending files in this format is that all text and graphics will be Bitmap rather than Vector quality. If the file is sent at 300dpi resolution then in our experience the results are generally considered acceptable.

We are also pleased to accept virtually every other file format there is. We list here the most common formats which we receive. The list is not exhaustive. If your application is not listed please check with us.

• Adobe Creative Suite - all versions Mac, PC
• Adobe Pagemaker - from 5 onwards - Mac, PC
• Corel Draw - from 6 onwards - Mac, PC
• Corel Printhouse all versions - PC
• Macromedia Freehand - from 3 onwards - Mac, PC
• Microsoft Office & Publisher -from 97 onwards - Mac, PC
• Quark Express - from 4 onwards - Mac, PC
• Serif Page Plus-from 6 onwards - PC
• Xara all versions - PC

Please note: We make a nominal charge of £20.00 + VAT to work with files which are not supplied as PDF.

Unless we are specifically requested we do not send proofs of jobs prior to print. In the electronic world sending hard copy proofs by post causes major delays and sending digital proofs is little more than returning the file sent to us back again!

When a high resolution (Press Quality) PDF, Jpg or Tif file is provided as the origination for printing then this file can also serve as the Customer Proof Copy - CPC.

With a CPC to refer to when our designers work on your files they can be confident that the text is all present, that the fonts are correct, that the photos have not moved etc.

As we mentioned previously we are happy to accept your design in the format of the programme you used to create it. In this case we will send you a CPC in PDF format - a proof quality file to be checked for layout and content.

Whichever programme you use there are some common guidelines which may be helpful in preparing your Artwork.

Please supply everything ‘one up’. It is more successful if you leave us to sort out the imposition for printing. e.g. Provide one business card on a 90mm x 50mm or 85mm x 55mm page.

Booklets should ideally be in number order pages (we will sort out the printers pairs).

We are pleased to accept ‘ganged up’ jobs. This means that several individual elements are arranged on a larger sheet. We regard the ‘job’ as being the larger sheet size and charge accordingly. The only additional cost is for the extra cutting to create the individual elements at the end of the production process. ‘Ganging’ of jobs can be cost effective, please call 020 8688 6133 for details.

Understanding the need for 'Bleed' and a 'Quiet Border' is vital if, as partners, we are going to achieve our joint aim of an excellent finished print job.

We require Bleed to allow for the tolerance of our guillotines (the machine used for cutting your job after printing). Even with our 'State of the Art' equipment there is a margin of error in the operation.

If your image finishes exactly at the edge of your required finished size then these small deviations may produce unsightly white flashes at the edge of your print. By extending your background colour or image beyond the edge of your finished job the consequences of such a deviation are not perceptible.

We recommend that elements intended to go to the very edge of your finished job should extend 3mm beyond the edge.

A ‘Quiet Border’ is the distance you should allow from the edge of your finished page size to text or diagrams etc. The reason for this border is again the tolerance in cutting. If you have a design where the text runs to the very edge then a cutting deviation will actually cut off some of your text! A very small ‘Quiet Border’ can result in a finished job looking very uneven.

We recommend a ‘Quiet Border ‘where there is no text, etc. of at least 5mm around the edges of your job.

We carry all the most popular Mac and PC fonts, please confirm at the time of ordering.

Where you have used a rare font outside the 'normal' range we recommend converting the text created with this font into curves. This means that we no longer require the original font when we print your job.

Where you are supplying your work as a PDF it should always be produced with fonts embedded. With a Tif or Jpg, fonts are much less of an issue since these formats effectively embed the fonts required to print.

There are a large number of variables which can affect the colour produced in Full Colour Printing. Simply looking at the appearance of colours on a monitor, especially if no monitor calibration has been carried out, is unlikely to produce predictable printed results.

In just the same way an un-calibrated desktop printer, such as a laser or inkjet may well produce very different colours to those produced on a professional printing press.

Rather than leaving colour matching to chance and 'keeping your fingers crossed' we strongly recommend that colours be chosen from Hard Copy Colour Charts. We have produced two Colour Swatch Booklets (one printed on Coated material and the other on Uncoated material) which show over 1000 colours together with their CMYK values. The advantage of using these charts is that they are exactly matched to our presses.

Our Colour Swatch Booklets are available for £10.00 + VAT & Carriage each or £13.50 + VAT for the pair. They are an invaluable and accurate way of ensuring predictable colour.

Please Note: Where you have a particular colour issue, for example a requirement to match to a specific company colour or a previously printed job, this MUST be brought to our attention at the order stage. Simply specify the colour to be matched to or the fact that the job has been printed previously in ‘Special Instructions’ during the online ordering process.

If you have a swatch of the colour required please send us a hard copy of that. We cannot be held responsible if your printed work does not match your requirements unless those requirements are brought to our attention before we print.

Photographs should be scanned size for size at 300dpi and saved as CMYK images (the only exception to the CMYK rule is images for Hexachrome Printing which should be sent as RGB).

If you have not scanned for print before we again recommend our Hard Copy Colour Charts. As well as the colour swatches these include an image which is called Ole no Moire. The same image is available for download from www.cheapleaflets.co.uk together with calibration instructions.

By opening the Ole no Moire image on your screen and comparing it with the image on the Chart, it is possible to carry out a fair calibration of your monitor. Once this has been carried out, when you view a photo on screen, it will be a close rendition of the press print.

We can re-balance photos scanned by you for £10.00 + VAT per scan. Please send the original photo for us to match to. We can also re-touch photos, cut out backgrounds, make good blemishes, etc. The cost of these additional services would be fixed prior to ordering.

We make a small optional charge to carry out extensive Pre-flighting of your job. We would strongly recommend that you ask us to carry out the Pre-flight because then your job will be carefully checked by an experienced designer and also our proof readers prior to print.

Should we find potential issues with the files you have provided we would work with you to resolve the problems. It may be that a new file is required or alternatively we can often correct the issues.

Before sending your job please make sure that the artwork is centred within the selected document size. Should your job be double sided then a 2 page pdf will need to be supplied with the artwork central on the page.

Please Note: If you decide not to have your job pre-flighted we will simply print what you have sent! If the corrections which you want us to do are excessive there may be an additional charge.

Our normal service does not include proofs. If you supply a Print Ready PDF, we simply use our pre-flight service to check your files and proceed to print. If you approve a PDF we have created, this also goes through our pre-flight service. The system is fast and efficient. However, in some circumstances proofs are desirable and we are pleased to produce proofs from the PDFs prior to printing. This will add extra time to your order.

The proofs we supply are created on our Highwater RIP and we use the same files for these as we do for your final print run. The purpose of the Highwater digital proof is for you to see the product in its finla size and to give you a good idea of colour. Please do bear in mind that whilst it is a high quality proof, it is produced using an inkjet based system on special paper so will not be identical to your finished product, although it can be used for colour matching in the factory if you wish.

• Bleed 3mm
• Quiet area (inside margin) 5mm
• Colour scheme: CMYK
• PDF Pre-requisites:
  • 300dpi resolution image files
  • Text needs to be converted to paths
  • Transparencies need to be flattened
  • 'Overprint' needs to be turned off when originating files