Print-ready PDF files
Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is great for a multitude of uses. It caused a revolution in printing. Everything needed for high resolution printing can be packed into one file that can be opened and printed using Adobe's free Reader on almost any computer. The trick is, because a PDF can be created many different ways, to create it the correct way and pack it with the essential information for printing. Here are a few of the minimum requirements for a PDF to be usable for high-resolution printing using our process.
- All fonts used in the document should be embedded in the PDF file.
- The preference for "Subsetting" the fonts should be set to 100%.
- For CMYK printing, all color in the document should be CMYK. This goes for ink colors as well as photos and illustrations. The PDF output options should be set to "leave color unchanged".
- Make sure that the photos and line art in the document do not have their resolution reduced (downsampled) when the PDF is created. Photos should retain their 300 dpi resolution. Line art should be 1200 dpi(optimum), but no lower than 600 dpi (minimum)
- The compression should be fine set on "automatic" but some say "zip" is better than "jpeg" for quality. You can also choose "none" and the photos will not be compressed when the PDF is created but this will result in a larger PDF.
If you follow these guidelines, your PDF will work for high-resolution CMYK printing. The same PDF will also work in all the processes that require less resolution as well.