Printing & Prepress

The good news is, the more you know at the beginning, the better off you’ll be. But if there’s an element or requirement you do not understand or are not comfortable with, Raff will work with you to help guide your file creation and preparation. Contact your sales rep or in-house project manager.

Here’s a basic list:

Proofs are initially provided via email or “cloud” share as a print-ready .pdf file and must be approved by you prior to Raff moving forward with your project. However, you are welcome to be present during your press run in order to press-check printed finals in person. We also offer hard-copy proofs on request.

To a certain extent?  Absolutely. We will let you know if your image, content and/or design file passes our pre-press quality control — and if not, we will let you know what needs to be altered, edited or changed in order to give you the best print output possible. Sometimes those changes are relatively simple—and we generally can make those for you upon request with nominal or no charge.

Absolutely—upon request. Our customers often look for a “standard” type of print product—a flyer, a one-page trifold brochure, a roll fold, a pocket folder, an X number of pages booklet, etc.

We are more than willing to share die lines and examples from past projects to assist you in setting up your own. Just ask your sales representative or prepress contact in advance.

Yes, however, you should not confuse one with the other. A spread extends across two separate pages (or multiple separate pages) and should be designed as such within your design software. Single pages are exactly what you think they are—single pages or two-sided pages--but also require your design software setup properly (crops, margins, bleeds, 300 dpi images, etc.)

Margins and bleeds are design choices, not requirements. However, if you use them, be certain they are consistent and indicated.

As a general rule of thumb, all bleeds (colors and images extending beyond the actual page's planned physical border) should be set to a uniform width of 1/8th inch beyond the page border.

All color files should be CMYK (not RGB), as RGB conversion does not always yield the intended colors.

All images should be 300 dpi. Please edit and resize imagery in your choice photo manipulation software PRIOR to importing images into your final design file.

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Indesign, and High-Quality Print prepared Adobe PDFs are recommended so long as all fronts are embedded. Consult with your sales representative in advance prior to packaging, zipping, and transmitting print files.

We can work with many file types, but it is helpful to know in advance what software and type of file you are planning to submit.