Prepress Resources

To ensure Graphcom can provide you with the highest quality print solutions, please review and apply the following standards and concepts when submitting your files.

Color

• Graphcom is a G7® Colorspace Master qualified production facility.
• All files are converted to the GRACoL2013_CRPC6.icc CMYK color space for production.
  • We recommend this color space profile for production.
  • These color profiles and Adobe color settings files are freely available from IDEAlliance.
• CMYK is the preferred color mode for file submission.
• RGB color is accepted.
  • RGB color exceeds reproducible color for most print devices. Bright, vivid, saturated color in RGB image/art is subject to color gamut compression, converting the out-of-gamut color into a device’s printable color space. This conversion/compression can lead to dull or washed-out color, however, this does not mean your product will be dull. Our color proofs will reflect this conversion adequately. Hard copy sample proofs will provide the most accurate representation.
• Media (Stock, Paper) Color Performance
  • Offset (conventional):
    • Coated media reproduces the brightest color gamut.
    • Uncoated media color reproduction is duller and cannot provide an exact match to some bright/saturated colors produced on coated media.
  • Digital (many methods)
    • Coated or ridged media will reproduce the brightest color.
    • Uncoated media on many digital devices can reproduce brighter colors than conventional offset print on similar media. Some, like aqueous inkjet, cannot.

• Color-critical work
  • Exact matches between differing processes and/or media may not be possible. Please discuss color matching between printing processes and differing media with your Graphcom Project Manager early in your project planning.
  • Please ensure all color-critical work files are built consistently with proper CMYK or spot colors. File elements that are intended to color match, but built with mixed color modes (RGB, CMYK, and spot), may not convert consistently. This includes native color swatches and settings, as well as those embedded in links.
  • PDF/X-4 is preferred for color-critical work.

Color–Pantone & Pantone Matching

• Please build files with default Pantone Coated (C) or Uncoated (U) spot color swatches for our systems to provide the best color match for each printing process. 
• DO NOT alter default Pantone swatch color names.
• DO NOT alter the color of Pantone spot color swatches in your design application. This will not alter the Pantone color produced. If your intention is a custom mixed process color loosely based on a Pantone color, alter the name of the swatch and set the swatch to process color.

Coatings and Dies (used for special finishes and processes)

• Dielines for Cuts, Scores, Foil, or Embossing, and/or coating separations, such as Varnish and UV Coatings can be referred to as technical inks.
  • Dielines and separations can be supplied by the designer or created by Graphcom per supplied specification.
• Set all technical inks as spot colors, named similarly to their intended process (i.e. Name a die cut key line: Die Cut). Contact your Graphcom Project Manager for a list of Graphcom’s technical ink names to streamline your production success.
• Overprinting: Technical inks are required to have overprint applied. This prevents the ink below from disappearing on your separations.
• All die and finishing separation art must be built as vector art. Rasterized art used to create a separation will need to be traced manually or auto-traced. Loss of detail or alignment offsets may occur.
  • Supply these separations to Graphcom in a single PDF and/or native file.

Art Layout & Production Templates

• Supply all final art as individual pieces, not imposed or on art boards larger than the product dimension + bleed + crop marks. Graphcom will impose files as needed.
• Use custom cutting and folding templates provided by Graphcom to avoid late-term corrections. Unvalidated templates may not account for our requirements and can cause late-term delays and errors, and require new estimation to account for requirements for layout to work as supplied.
• Graphcom may require extra time to strip the art from your supplied template and place it into a production template.

Resolution

• Photographic effective resolutions of 300 ppi are preferred for high-quality printing. Any effective resolution below 150 ppi (sign production requirement may be as low as 72 ppi, depending on viewing distance) is subject to additional approval.
  • Note: Effective resolution is the final resolution after an image (photo or other pixel-based art) has been scaled larger or smaller, not just the file’s native resolution at 100% size.
• High-resolution PDF export settings DO NOT make low-resolution images (photo or other pixel-based art) high resolution. These settings only ensure the resolution of high-quality images. Low-resolution content remains low resolution.
• In applications such as Quark or Illustrator, set drop shadow and/or effects settings to 300 ppi. (minimum 150 ppi).

Native Design Files (Adobe, Quark, Microsoft)

• Before file submission, correct overset text
• Remove unused design elements from art boards before submission or packaging.
• Create new or verify existing design files have the bleed size set in the document setup or are created with bleed integrated into the file dimension before PDF export.
• When submitting native design files, provide a full package with fonts and links using the design application’s built-in packaging function. Fonts are necessary for Photoshop text editing. 
• Submit fonts and Microsoft Office files (Word, PowerPoint, etc…) to avoid font substitution when output to PDF.
  • Word and PowerPoint have a function to embed an entire font for portable editing or a subset for production submission. Submitting the font separately or entirely embedded are the two best options if production editing is expected by a Graphcom production department.

Bleed

• Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office documents do not have a separate bleed setup. Create these documents larger than the desired size by adding the required bleed to the desired final file size.
• See product sections below for instructions on products that have different bleed requirements. 

Trim Safety Area

• Any text or graphics should be inset from the final trim edge of your design. This is to prevent required text or graphics of your final product from being unintentionally cut off or punctured during production finishing.
• The safety requirement may be different, based on the product being created. See the individual sections below for requirements.

Fonts

• Graphcom does not store customers’ fonts for editing later projects.
• Project fonts should be submitted with each design package or separately for editing Microsoft Office, PDF, or any other file format that does not create production file packages.
• We may optionally use a Graphcom-owned font to apply required edits, but our font version may not contain a matching or full character set of your original font.
• We take great care to match the original typesetting, but differing font versions may not match character size, baseline, leading, kerning, or other aspects. If a mismatch is recognized, we will communicate the problem and request the original font to be submitted to complete the edit.
• We will not “harvest” other customers’ fonts submitted for their projects to edit another customer’s document. Fonts are legally licensed software that must be provided by the owner to be used on a specific document or project.

PDF corrections

• PDF should be considered a final file that should not require any alteration aside from general prepress conversion operations.
• PDFs are not recommended for extensive edits or use as a master design file. Native design applications and files are more precise for editing. Extra time may be incurred if the PDF needs to be rebuilt in a native format to complete the alteration.
• Corrections to any type/copy may require us to request the original font used in the document. Most PDFs only contain the font characters already used in the PDF, not a full copy of the font.  An entire copy of a font can be embedded for later edits but can create extremely large PDFs with all of the extra data embedded.

Production-Ready PDF

• General requirements
  • Always export PDF with bleed. 
  • Crop/Trim marks are requested for some production. See specific requirements in the following sections.
  • DO NOT include bleed marks, registration marks, or color bars on production-ready PDFs.
  • Unflattened transparency is preferred for editability.
  • Do not add PDF annotation for instruction or to alter your production PDF. If annotation is required for any reason, inform Graphcom at file submission or submit a separate PDF as a design key with annotations for instruction.
• PDF/X-4
  • Preferred PDF type. Use PDF/X-4 export Settings for flexible production.
  • DO NOT flatten transparency during export or on native files or links.

• PDF/X-1a
  • Acceptable.
  • Difficult or impossible to apply late-stage edits. Native file or new PDF submission may be requested if corrections are required.
  • Files are forced to CMYK, which may reduce the color gamut for some digital printing devices.

• Distilled postscript to PDF
  • Acceptable.
  • At best, this will create a PDF/X-1a file as described above.
  • Note on postscript output: While it is an older and generally acceptable output method to output/print to postscript and create a PDF with Acrobat Distiller, Graphcom prefers PDF files that are directly output with native transparency (PDF/X-4) to optimize production output. 

• Other nonstandard PDF formats
  • PDF is an open format, and not all features of PDF are compatible with print production.
  • Other presets than our preferred types above may produce acceptable production-ready PDFs but may require prepress file correction. Others may produce poor color or impossibility to match between products, and some may produce poor image quality.