Basic specification for files. Henry Ling InDesign CS5, InDesign CS5.5, InDesign CS3, OpenOffice, Word 2013, InDesign CS4, WORD 2010, Adobe Reader, Acrobat Distiller, QuarkXPress

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Basic specification for files

See the individual sections for settings specific to your program, but the following is our basic requirements;

• PDF files made to the PDF/X-1a standard. PDF/X is an ISO standard for graphic content exchange – click here to find out more. If your software can’t create PDF/X files we will accept any

PDF with all fonts embedded and subsetted.

See this guide for files that will setup your programs, to create suitable PDF files. The files made by our settings are suitable for both digital or litho

(“conventional”) printing.

• Pages should be supplied with crop marks where possible. Text pages should be supplied as single pages not spreads.

Covers should be supplied as spreads, i.e. the first page of your file is the Outside

Back Cover/spine/Outside Front Cover, the second page (if applicable) Inside

Front Cover/spine/Inside Back Cover.

• Files must be produced as composite, i.e. each colour not separated onto its own ‘page’.

• Your page size should match the trimmed size of the job, with all the text positioned correctly within that page. Any blank pages required in your publication should be included in the

PDF. Bleed allowance is 3mm.

• Any colour in the PDF should ideally be either grey, CMYK or properly specified

Pantone colours. Where your software allows, using our settings will convert any RGB colours to CMYK when the

PDF is made, but not Pantone colours so please don’t include any unwanted

Pantone colours in your PDFs. See

Appendix I for more information

regarding CMYK/RGB colours and colour management.

• Overlapping colour objects should be set to overprint or knockout correctly.

See Adobe Acrobat section for more on

this. Please do not apply any trapping.

• We recommend the following resolutions for your images; 300dpi for normal halftones (photographs), 500dpi for fine-art halftones/those containing text or fine lines and 1270dpi for line work (1-bit bitmap images). If your job will be printed digitally the resolutions can safely be lower. NB All resolutions stated are at their finished size (i.e. as they appear on the page). This may be different to the resolution the images were scanned at. If an image is enlarged on the page it will reduce the effective resolution of the image, and if it is reduced the effective resolution is increased (half the size, double the resolution, and vice versa).

• For best quality reproduction, by either digital or litho (“conventional”) printing on coated paper, greyscale halftone images (black and white photographs) should have their highlights no less than 3% and their shadows no more than 97%. Highlight dots smaller than this are too small to hold on press and shadow dots larger will spread and ‘fill in’ to 100% black – both can lead to a loss of detail in those areas. For colour work the maximum amount of CMYK at any point in the shadow area (known as the TIC – Total

Ink Coverage) should be 330%. Contact us if you are planning to use uncoated paper.

Always arrange to submit a sample PDF for testing in advance of sending your first job to us.

This will help to iron out any minor issues prior to the demands of deadlines. If you used Adobe

InDesign or have Adobe Acrobat we recommend where possible that you ‘preflight’ your files before submitting them. See program-specific sections of this guide for more information. This will check for basic errors such as missing fonts and low resolution images. Please check if any of the programs you plan to use include a preflight check feature.

This guide covers what specific settings to use in the most popular page layout programs we encounter but the above specification can be applied to other programs.

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