Trim Line: This is the finished size of the piece.
Live Area: The area that is considered safe to keep any important information within. For example, if an ad’s trim size is 8.5 in × 11 in, the live area might be 8 in × 10.5 in. This takes into consideration the binding if the ad is placed on the left or right of a spread and you don’t want copy to be unreadable if it is too close to the spine.
Bleed Area: The minimum bleed you need for a printed piece is 0.125 in (1/8 in). If you are working with an image in Photoshop and you’re placing it in InDesign for print preparation, keep in mind the area you might need to use for the bleed.
Crop Marks: Indicates where to cut the paper.
Fonts: To avoid any font issues you can outline fonts or include them when sending the print ready file. Saving your document as a print ready pdf also avoids fonts issues.
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A vector graphic uses math to draw shapes using points, lines and curves. So whereas a raster image of a 1” x 1” square at 300 dpi will have 300 individuals pieces of information, a vector image will only contain four points, one for each corner; the computer uses math to “connect the dots” and fill in all of the missing information. The most common types of vectors? Graphics, fonts and logos. These are created using programs such as Adobe Illustrator. Popular vector file format extensions include: eps, ai and pdf. Vectors can also scale to any size without losing quality. Another thing to keep in mind is that even though your file may be an .ai or .pdf it can still have raster images within it that do need appropriate resolution for the size that you want to print.
A raster graphic is an image made of hundreds (or thousands or millions) of tiny squares of color information, referred to usually as pixels.The most common type of raster graphic? A Digital photograph. The most used program for creating and editing raster files is Adobe Photoshop. Popular raster file format extensions include: jpg, psd, png, tiff, bmp and gif. Rasters have a max size for quality based on the amount of pixels that make up the image.ex. 1500 x 2100 pixels in a digital image if printed at 300 ppi (pixels per inch) will translate to 5" x 7" inches.
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A lot of the colors you use in RGB mode are not achievable using standard four-color process printing. It is always best to create your document from the start in CMYK color mode to ensure that you have a better idea of how your colors are going to print.
Another thing to keep in mind when sending in you files is that colours that you see on your computer screen can vary from other computers screens as well as when printed in various ways, be it digital printer, large format or offset press.
Another colour system is Pantone Spot colours. These are exclusively used for offset press printing and are pre made special inks that can't be 100% reproduced with CMYK.
Colour or Black and white. With printing, there is a big difference in price when printing colour vs black and white. Even if you have a mostly black and white document with small colour graphics in the layout it is still considered colour printing unless everything is black and white.
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