Handy Guide to Providing Artwork for Printing

Your excellent design is ready to print, but are you still worried about uploading your artwork properly to us? 

You are not alone; take comfort in the fact that even the best designers worry about getting their artwork printed. That’s because printing involves a lot of checklists and parameters that have to be kept in mind, especially when you are getting your artwork printed such as hoarding printing.

To ensure your artwork is printed to perfection such as foamex board, without delays and with the suitable finishes you’ve requested, we prefer artwork to be provided in a particular format, resolution, colour and bleed. 

Guide to Providing Artwork for Printing

We have covered all the crucial points to remember before sending your artwork for printing in this handy guide. 

Format

When you send your artwork for printing, make sure it is in the prescribed format. Sending the artwork in the correct format helps you achieve the best results. And, the person printing your artwork doesn’t need further details or instructions. 

We accept the following formats – PDF, JPEG, Tiff, and EPS, however PDF is the most preferred and common format.

Colour

One common mistake people make when providing their artwork for printing is sending it in the wrong colour profile. That’s because the computers at home use RGB to produce the pigments we see on the screen. However, when printing, we use a colour space called CMYK – cyan, magenta, yellow and black. 

You should remember that when you send your artwork for commercial printing, it should always be in CMYK format. 

Pro-Tip: Converting your artwork from RGB into CMYK format will cause variations in colour in your artwork. To avoid this, we suggest you work in CMYK colours to get an exact idea of how the final printed output would look. 

We accept artwork in CMYK colour space.

Resolution

When we talk about DPI or PPI, we mean the resolution or the image quality. DPI stands for ‘Dots per Square Inch.’ It talks about the number of dots or pixels the printer can put together in a square inch space. So, the more pixels, the higher the resolution of the image.

For example, if an image is of 100 DPI, its pixel density is 10,000 pixels. Likewise, a 300 DPI image will have a higher and sharper resolution than a 100 DPI image. In a 300 DPI image, the picture is so perfect that the naked eye won’t distinguish individual pixels – making the picture achieve a photographic quality. 

We recommend the artwork submitted for printing have a minimum of 300 DPI.

Bleed

You should give enough additional background space beyond the final size to accommodate for any errors in printing or misalignment during cutting. 

A bleed is an extra area that is provided around your artwork. This additional area is printed but is chopped off during the final cut. The idea behind having a bleed area is to make sure the final printed product doesn’t have an ungainly looking white edge around the artwork.

When you provide trim or crop marks, the printers know precisely where you want your artwork to be cut. 

All artwork provided for printing should have a minimum of 3mm bleed and proper crop marks. 

Embed

Before submitting your artwork for hoarding printing, ensure all the images and fonts are embedded properly for best results.

Pro tip: Save all the files you used to make the design so that the artwork can easily be opened on another computer. Make sure you provide the images in their original format – along with all the fonts and files used in the artwork. Even if the images are embedded, we suggest you provide the images separately. It is also recommended to outline all text.

Final Checking

We undertake the final checking to make sure your artwork is printed to perfection. We also undertake a stringent checking process that emphasizes quality, strict adherence to buyer requirements and deadlines. Before we give your artwork for printing, we ensure the size, resolution, print, colours, alignment and bleed are in order.

We run the artwork against our checklist at every stage of printing and finishing to avoid missing any crucial detail at any stage. We may seek your approval with artwork proofs before giving the go-ahead for printing. 

At Foamex Printing, we provide complete assistance and guidance in submitting foamex signs artwork to us. You can reach out to our design team should you need any help in completing, checking or preparing your artwork.