Tec Color Craft - Art Specifications/ Prepress Guidelines

Art Specifications/ Prepress Guidelines

ILLUSTRATOR 8.0 (Preferred) / 9.0 /10.0 / & C.S. • FREEHAND 9.0 / 10.0 • PHOTOSHOP 5.0 • COREL 6 (Along with your art files, please include a PDF or jpg file for viewing and accuracy purposes.)
Art should be set up at 100% size to fit the die (cut) line.
Minimum line weight must be 1 point.
Gradients must have a minimum 10% dot in all colors.
Position all art at least 1/8” inside the die or cut line.
Placed graphics (EPS/TIF) should be single subjects. (ie. DO NOT place EPS or TIF files in Illustrator.eps then place Illustrator.eps Quark. Try to maintain label design in one design program.)
Do not use layers in Adobe Illustrator. Artwork must be flattened.
Use of transparency in Adobe Illustrator should be avoided. This may cause unpredictable results in file output.

Fonts

• Convert all fonts to outlines/paths. Fonts converted to outlines/paths are no longer live type and make it no longer necessary to supply fonts. (TO CREATE OUTLINES IN ILLUSTRATOR: SELECT THE TYPE, GO TO THE TYPE MENU, AND SCROLL DOWN TO “CREATE OUTLINES.”)

Printing with Process & Spot Colors

• Specify/Set UP Art Files as to how the job will be printed:

PMS Pantone (Spot) Colors Four Color Process (CMYK) CMYK plus PMS Pantone (Spot) Colors
Delete unused colors in swatch pallete.
Spot Black (2nd black) is recommended for all text and solid areas. Opaque White is recommended to add density to printed colors on transparent material.
Vector art is needed for spot color printing. For more information on vector art, please visit our web site under the topic “Art Specifications.”

Art Documentation for Printed Pieces

Preferred documentation of your provided art is a color laser with separations printed out at 100% size. However, grayscale lasers with color breakdowns are acceptable.

Laser proofs provided must be the final version of file. They must match artwork given. Any differences could slow processing through the pre-press department or estimated price.

Images

• All images must be cropped, sized and rotated in the native application prior to placement.

(For example: an original 6” X 5”, 300 DPI, 4 MB Photoshop image where only a 1” square portion is used in final art. Image should be cropped to 1” area in Photoshop before placement into art file.)
Images must be saved in the following Photoshop formats:
Must be minumum 300 dpi (dot per inch) CMYK.TIFF/EPS (DO NOT USE RGB COLOR) Four-color process jobs must be saved with minimum 10% dot, to hold smoothly on the screen without hard edges on open white areas. Grayscale images must have a 10% minimum dot and are subject to conversion to a dither/bitmap for open white areas. Bitmap images must be at least 600 dpi for solid reproduction to film and screen. Low Res/FPO (for position only) images must be clearly marked aned labeled accordingly in the file name with the HI Res equivalent provided for replacement.

Provided Digital Media

Clearly label disks/cartridges with company name,disk number, purchase order number & attach a printed directory of the disk/cartridge contents.

Give each file a simple descriptive name.
Give revised files a new file name ( i.e. ver_#2).
Include all linked files (EPS,TIFF,etc.).
Copy files so that links will be maintained (i.e. the same folder) when files are opened.
Make compressed files self-extracting. Convert PC files to Mac files when possible.
We have the ability to accept files on the following media:100 & 250mb Zip Disks,Superdisk 120 mb,3.5" Diskette,CDs or E-mail.

E-Mail

We can accept your art in any of the formats mentioned above via e-mail. Send files to: artroom@teccolorcraft.com

E-mail requirements: Stuffed/self extracting, Compressed or Zipped (limited to a maximum of 5MB each attachment).

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For more specific information visit us on the web at www.teccolorcraft.com

1860 Wright Avenue La Verne, CA. 91750 Phone: (909) 392-9000 Fax: (909) 392-9337