How to make the best files for printing

Good printing prepress file preparation takes time. In the era of digital design, prepress work looks deceptively easy. Making sure your files are print ready takes time to do well. Integrated marketing campaigns that combine traditional and digital materials can be ruined during their launch by poor quality print work or an error. Unlike a digital design, your sloppy printed piece is time consuming and costly to correct, reprint and ship back out for distribution.

A growing problem

Comps are now done with the look of final art. Gone are the charcoal, watercolor, and pencil art sketches used to present design concepts. Now we are often likely to email or post a PDF of a concept to discuss on Slack rather than make a presentation board and present the concept in person. This can create a misperception.

Modern software tools give a finished, polished look to even the roughest ideas, which requires less imagination and make-believe to visualize the finished product. Because of these very polished preliminary drafts, it seems like the production of a final file once a concept has been approved should take only minutes — but it doesn’t.

Production

There are hours of work to take a digital concept to finished print product. For example, we have a checklist with twenty-eight steps to produce a final 4-color print ad from an approved design. While none of this is the fun and creative part of the process, it is necessary to deliver a quality print-ready advertising file for production in a magazine or newspaper.

Our Print Prepress Checklist

Designer

1. Size and crop all images in Adobe PhotoShop
2. Merge all drop shadows with images; flatten layers
3. Place images in the design document (encapsulated), not linked
4. Spell check all text blocks
5. Check text layer(s); make sure that all text is on non-art layers
6. Check stroke and line weights on all elements (not text)
7. Remove unused colors from color palette/swatches
8. Check colors (CMYK, spot, spot conversions, grayscale)
9. Save document copy for web-safe PDF production — needed for step 19
10. Convert each text block to outlines
11. Group each text block
12. Check color of each text block to prevent color shift
13. Set black text to overprint (this produces sharper text when you have a background)
14. Create crop marks and bleed area
15. Set document properties
16. Save document as an Adobe Creative Suite compatible file, EPS, and PDF
17. Check EPS for color shift and layering problems (make sure that all type is visible, that there are no gradient replacements, and no loss of transparencies)
18. Print proof with crop marks in color, in the highest resolution you can
19. Open web-safe PDF from step 9 and create preview PDF, down-sampling images to 150 dpi or less
20. Send the 4 documents and placed images for proofing

Proofing

1. Create a copy of design and PDF files for proofing
2. Check file size dimensions, bleed area and safe area
3. Print color separations (check colors); proof each plate for inclusion elements against color proof provided by designer. Verify the following:
   • Type set to overprint
   • Only correct color plates (no additional spot colors)
   • No dropped elements
   • Choke and trap set when required
   • No transparent elements that may color shift
   • No overprint light colors over dark
4. Proofread the text backwards, comparing to a text document or marked-up client approval copy
5. Pre-flight images for resolution and size
6. Compare color proof to client-approved printout for all elements
7. Close file — DO NOT SAVE. If changes are needed send notes to the designer.
8. If the proof passed, package the original file from designer for publication, traffic to the printer

Most of the steps in our advertising print production checklist are simple and normal creative production workflow. Some are the result of experience earned on how to make a file most likely to be compatible for any print publication and reduce the risk of unintended color shifts and “drop outs”.

We clearly separate the proofing from the design function. It’s important to have a set of “fresh eyes” view the files. Here's a favorite digital example of why making the time for separate proofing steps is important - we got a chuckle when we ran across this ad on a wind (ahem) industry website.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in May 2017 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.