06/04/2018
Good to Know: Printing Terms
Don’t let a little language confusion get between your concept and your final, printed piece. Use these terms to build understanding, pin down expectations, and produce printed pieces that shine!
Production Terms:Print Tips_Margin-Trim-Bleed2.png
Crop Marks, Trim Marks, and Page Edge: These marks indicate the final size of a printed piece and where each piece will be cut or trimmed to be made into that final size.
Safe Zone and Margins: Important copy, artwork and other content all need to be inside the safe zone of your printed piece (indicated by the margins) so that it doesn’t run the risk of being cut off due to mechanical variations when the printed piece is trimmed to its final size.
Bleed: When a design extends past the page edge (and the trim or crop marks), it is said to “bleed.” This ensures that there’s no chance of a white border after a printed piece is trimmed.
To help when designing, we provide product templates with trim, margin, and bleed areas clearly indicated in both PDF and EPS formats.
Color Management and Image Quality:Print Tips_CMYK-RGB.png
CMYK, also called four-color or process color: CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Combinations of very small dots of ink in these four colors are used in printing to create nearly the full range of colors we can see. Artwork files for printing must be submitted as CMYK.
RGB: RGB stands for red, green and blue, the three colors of light typically used to display full-color images on a screen (like a computer monitor, TV, or tablet). RGB and CMYK are not the same, and artwork created in RGB mode will look a bit different when it prints in CMYK! We encourage you to make sure that digital artwork files are converted from RGB to CMYK before you submit them so that you can preview any color shift that occurs in the conversion. If you need assistance in converting images from RGB to CMYK, don’t hesitate to ask us! Our experts are happy to help.
Grayscale: Black and white images and artwork should be converted to grayscale. When printed, grayscale images are made up of small dots of black ink, and the density (or lack of) these dots determines the shade of gray that image area will print as—ranging all the way from black to white.
PMS/Spot Color: The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is the industry standard used to specify ink colors other than C, M, Y or K. Artwork may be specified as two-color or as having spot color, meaning it will print with black and a second color, usually a PMS ink.
Print Tips_Resolution.png
Resolution: Dots per inch (dpi) is a measurement that indicates the resolution (sharpness and overall quality) of an image. Files and images for print must have a minimum dpi of 350, although images for the web are often at 72dpi.