Our objectives at Open Print are to offer you a high quality product and make the creation of this product easier for you.

Click on the links below to read some useful tips about document preparation that can help you to create your printing project and make sure we will receive it in the best format and condition.

SUPPLY ALL FONTS AND IMAGES

Fonts must be included with the job. There are two types of fonts: Postcript (is preferred) and Truetype. Postcript has two parts: The screen font and the printer font. Both must be included. Even if the font is as common as Helvetica, it’s necessary that you send it. There are hundreds of variations of Helvetica, and yours might be one we don’t have. If you’re using Adobe Illustrator you can change your fonts to “outlines”, which will eliminate any font problems, but please send us your fonts anyway. If you send us an Adobe Photoshop file, it’s better to leave the text on its own layer. If you flatten the text, it will become the same resolution the file is, and even if it’s a 300dpi image, the text will appear jagged. Any images used must also be sent. Programs like QuarkXPres and Adobe Pagemaker link images instead of placing them right in the document. This saves time when working on a document, but if you don’t include your images they will get printed as low resolution pictures.

SCANS

The general rule for scanning images is to scan at twice the lpi (Lines per inch) of the printer your document is going to be printed on. Every printer is different, so it’s best to find out what the output of your printer is before scanning. If you’re scanning black and white images to be printed on the Xerox Docutech, the recommended resolution is 150 dpi. When scanning line-art or text, scan at a resolution of 600dpi. If scanning in color always scan CMYK, not RGB (RGB is for monitors and has much more variety of color that can actually be printed).

CREATING PDF'S

When creating a PDF with Acrobat Distiller there are a few settings that will optimize your document for printing. In Distiller choose Print Optimized from the Jobs Option menu. Then go to the Settings menu and choose Job Options. Click on the Compression Tab. Make sure you turned off all Bicubic Downsampling by unchecking the boxes and set all the Compression fields to Zip with 8-bit quality. Click on Ok and save this as a New Print Optimized Settings File. This will make sure that your images have the best quality possible when they get printed.

FILE TYPES

Adobe Portable Format (PDF) is the preferred file format. PDF format reduces problems that can arise when using native programs. PDF’s include all the images and fonts that are in documents, so that you don’t have to send them with your files. You also need to have native programs to read PDF files.

You just need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is free downloadable from: www.adobe.com

Nowadays, many programs include a way to create PDF files. If your program doesn’t have this option, you can purchase Acrobat Distiller from Adobe. If you’re sending a lot of files to get printed, it’s definitely worth it.

We also accept other kinds of formats, like: QuarkXpress, Adobe Pagemaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. If you’re sending a Word document, please include hard page breaks. If you have other software that is not listed here, and can’t send us a PDF file, please contact us and we’ll be pleased to help you.