Guide to Better Prepress
At O&V Printing we strive to give our customers the best results in the least amount of time. This page provides general guidelines to help you get your printed materials through our shop as quickly and efficiently as possible.

File Types
Document Sizes
Bleeds
Trapping
Images
Duotones and Spot Colors
Photos from Digital Cameras
Preparing to Save Your File
Sending Files to Us

File Types
In most cases, a good way to send us files is as a pdf. With this file type you don’t need to send the fonts and graphics for the file. Please note that we can’t edit these so the files need to be correct when they are sent to us. Also, please make sure your Acrobat Distiller settings are set to “Press Settings”. We can accept numerous file types such as: InDesign, Illustrator, Pagemaker, Quark, Photoshop, Publisher & Word. Publisher & Word files are not recommended for quality print jobs and extra charges could incur due to possible noncompliance with printing standards.

Our design department uses Macs, but we have the capability of accepting PC files as well. To find out the best way to send us your files, contact us for more information.

A key is to strive for files that aren’t cluttered with unwanted images, empty boxes or unused fonts. This can create larger file sizes and problems when printing.

Another very important point to remember is we must have all of the fonts used in the document. Each font has two parts, a printer font & screen font. We need both of these or the file might not print correctly or at all to our imagesetter.

Document Sizes
The standard document size is 8.5”x11”. However, we often run many different page sizes and can handle a document up to 19”x25” on the press. No matter what the document size is; please leave appropriate margins of .375” for gripper.

Standard brochures layouts are trifold - sizes 8.5x11 & 9x12. You can download examples of these for pdf below. These samples will help so that the brochure is laid out correctly according to where it will fold.

PDF Trifold Brochure (8.5x11)
PDF Trifold Brochure (9x12)

Bleeds
If your document has images which run to the edge of the page, these images must bleed off the edge of the page. This means that they must extend off the edge of the page to accommodate differences in trimming. At O&V Printing, we prefer a bleed of .125” on all sides of the document which contains bleeds. The best way to accomplish this is to place guides .125” from the outside edge of each page containing the bleed and spread the image to those guides.

Trapping
Our standard trapping is .007”

Images
In order for images to look their best, they should be scanned at 300 dpi or higher. A common misconception is that, if an image is, for example, at 72 dpi, it can simply be enlarged in Photoshop. Not true. A good rule to remember is that you can always reduce an image, but you can never enlarge the image. Most graphics downloaded from the internet are 72 dpi, so the image quality will be poor. An important thing to remember is that some images may print and look good on your inkjet printer but that does not guarantee that it will look that way off the press.

Images should be either an EPS, TIFF or JPG format. We can accept images in PICT, GIF and WMF; however, the later can usually be too low of resolution. Sending us a copy of the Photoshop (PSD) image in layers is helpful if we need to edit the file (fonts will need to be sent also). In order to be printed all images must be in CMYK format. If files are brought to us as RGB, please recognize that the files will have to be converted to CMYK which could change the appearance of the images.

Duotones and Spot Colors
Duotones and spot colors from Photoshop can be tricky. Please refer to your Adobe Photoshop User Guide for instructions.

Photos from Digital Cameras
These pictures need to taken at high resolution. Please remember, we can reduce these images but not enlarge them.

Preparing to Save Your Files
Please save all fonts, graphics (linked items), etc. with the page layout file. Some programs have an option which will gather everything together for you. They are named different in each program, but they accomplish the same final output; examples: “Save for Service Provider” in Pagemaker or in InDesign “Package”.

When printing a book, the pages need to be imposed, or arranged, in the correct order. Such as: if the book is 16 pages, when arranged to print page 1 will be across from page 16. Most page layout programs will automatically build a booklet like this for you. In Pagemaker, this option is also found under “Utilities - Plugins - Build Booklet”. Please check with your printer as to which layout to select (2-up Saddle Stitch, 8-up Perfect Bound, etc.).

Another important thing to consider is if you have problems printing the file to your printer, it will most likely cause problems or won’t print at all for us either.

Sending Your File to Us
There are several different methods to get your digital files to us: on Zip disk (100MB and 250MB), CD, flash drive or email info@oandvprinting.com. Please label your disks as to what job it is and who it is for and only include the files that we need. Also, please don’t send us your only copy of the files on the disk. Disks can get lost or damaged. We will only return Zip disks back to you.

Need to send us large files by internet?
Click here for FTP site instructions

It is very important that you print out a set of color or black & white proofs for us to use as a guide for outputting your files. Please be sure to check your proofs carefully so that you know that everything is exactly as you want on your final product.