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With our new site design you must login to access all the "dealer only" features of the site such as downloads, order forms, and your account information. |
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We realize that this information is lengthy but we ask that all of our customers and their graphic designers and artists take some time to read and understand these guidelines and directions and provide us with digital artwork made to our specifications. This will help us alleviate the amount of time we spend “fixing” customer artwork.
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| Topics Covered |
| Preferred File Types |
Submitting one of these file types will make it the easiest for all of us. These will be files that, when properly designed, will require very little work on our end to make them fit into our workflow. The less we have to manipulate your files the less chance there is of an error happening.
PDF
A PDF is the best file you can send us but there are a lot of variables involved. The quickest and easiest way to make your PDF will be to save your Illustrator file as a PDF. Otherwise, you can either run your EPS, Illustrator, or PostScript file through Distiller to convert it or print to your Acrobat Printer. In either case you should be using the “Press Quality” settings in order to ensure the correct compression of images and color consistency.
EPS
Adobe Illustrator CS or generic EPS files are almost as good as PDF since we can usually take your EPS and convert it into a PDF rather easily. You must ensure that you are using Spot colors, converting your type to outlines, and embedding all of your images.
TIFF
A TIFF from PhotoShop will usually work provided you've provided it at a high enough resolution for offset printing: 400 d.p.i. in CMYK mode for full color work and 600 d.p.i. in black & white mode, 1 TIFF per color, for spot color work.
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| Our Workflow |
With all the guidelines and suggestions you are about to read it would benefit you to know our workflow so as to better understand why we need the files we need.
- Our email system is, for the most part, automated and unattended. When emails come in the file is automatically printed and the attachments are saved to our downloads directory. When you FTP us your artwork you are storing your files on our in-house server. If you send us an email with a link to the artwork you should be sending us it will delay your order. We have the FTP utility so you don't have to worry about places like YouSendIt.com
- When we receive your artwork, either on disk, through email, or uploaded to our FTP site, an employee will take your file and attempt to open it. All of our design workstations have Adobe's Creative Suite 3 on them so, depending on the file you've sent us, we may or may not be able to open it.
- If you've sent us a “Preferred File” we will open your file in either Illustrator or PhotoShop, depending on whether it's a vector or raster file.
- If your file is vector artwork...
- The first thing we will check is to make sure that the type has been converted to outlines. If not we will open your file in PhotoShop and convert it to a TIFF.
- The second thing we will check the colors to ensure that you are using Spot colors. If you are and you failed to use our swatches we will merge your swatches with our BCT swatches..
- If you have not converted your type to outlines and are not using Spot inks you have limited our ability to make your file work.
- If your file is raster artwork...
- We will open your file in PhotoShop and make sure it has a high enough resolution for offset printing.
- For full color work your files should be no higher than 400 d.p.i. This is more than enough for our 300 line screen DI.
- For spot color work your files should be 600-1200 d.p.i. One TIFF per color plate.
- If your job is two or more colors and you did not send us individual files for each color plate we will attempt to make the separations but it is not always possible and will usually incur an art charge.
- If you've sent us a native application file like Word, Publisher, or QuarkXPress your order may be delayed for several reasons, not the least of which is that we do not have licenses on all of our workstations for the few programs we use only to convert files into a usable format. Problems with native files consist of font issues, color issues, and embedding issues.
- If everything has gone as planned and we finally have a good PDF with the type converted to outlines, or at least properly embedded, and colors that match our BCT swatches we will take your file and drop it into a 1up grid in InDesign and save it to our RAID. We then embed the image so we don't have to keep track of it's location, and export it to our “ganging directory.”
- This PDF will then be ganged onto a 4up or 12up grid in InDesign according to stock & color and then PostScripted to a Hot Folder on our PlateMaker.
- From there it goes to the press room.
Hopefully, you can see how much work can potentially go into making your artwork fit seamlessly through our workflow. This is why we need your help in reducing the amount of time we spend “fixing” artwork by making it correctly to our specifications.
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| Instructions |
| Please follow the instructions below to help ensure a seamless transition of your file from submission to production. Do not hesitate to email us and ask what you should do with your software if any of the following information is unclear or confusing.
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Artwork Files
- Do not send us native application files. Native application files like PageMaker, Publisher, and QuarkXPress have too many problems associated with them to make them viable formats. Font substitution & image embedding problems are just the beginning. Native formats are almost always a pain to deal with and will result in delays in production.
- Convert your type to outlines... do not provide fonts. Whenever possible you should always convert your type to outlines before submitting. We have as many as 13 design workstations, several of which will have to handle your file on it's way to our PlateMaker. We can not install your font on every machine that sees your file.
- Send the correct file type for your media. If you are working in PhotoShop you should be sending us TIFFs, not PDFs and most certainly not PhotoShop EPSes. If you are working in Illustrator, CorelDRAW, InDesign, QuarkXPress, PageMaker, or any other layout application you should be sending us EPSes or PDFs.
- Always use spot colors. Download the BCT Swatches and install them into Illustrator or InDesign. You can also place the BCT Swatches file into InDesign, PageMaker, or QuarkXPress and it will add the BCT Swatches to the color palette. If you are still unable to utilize our swatches you should be using spot colors referred to as Pantone Spot or Pantone Solid. Do not use Pantone Process color swatches.
- Provide your artwork 1-up at 100% size. We will do any ganging on our end if necessary.
- Provide one piece of artwork for each name or item. If you send us an EPS with 10 business cards on it we have to take each card and place it in a new file and save it. Please do not gang or otherwise combine artwork into a single file.
- Create your artwork on the correct page size. Do not use the standard letter-sized page and make all kinds of crop marks & guidelines (all of which need to be removed) to indicate your artwork's size. We will always have to resize the page and remove all extraneous information.
- Create the proper bleeds. If your artwork bleeds those objects that bleed must extend 1/8" beyond the edge of the card; no more, no less. If you can not accomodate the bleed while saving your file (like the bleed options when saving an Illustrator PDF) you will need to enlarge your page by 1/8" all the way around in order to hold the bleeds.
- Do not put anything on the artwork that does not print. No old information with a white box over it, no crop marks, no bleed marks, no file or order information. Unless specifically instructed to by BCT Arizona put nothing but artwork in your artwork.
- Register your colors correctly. If your two or more color job has inks that touch you need to correctly trap the affected colors. If your colors do not register on press and you have not properly trapped the art we will charge you for the redo.
- Be conscious of your file sizes. A full-color business card should not be much larger than 2-4 megs. If your file sizes are enormous there could be a few reasons why:
- You scaled a photograph in Illustrator instead of properly scaling it in PhotoShop before you placed it into Illustrator.
- You are not LZW compressing your TIFFs.
- You are not properly downsamplilng and compressing your images when making a PDF.
- Compress your TIFFs. If you are providing raster art (TIFFs) your images should be 600-1200 DPI and always saved using LZW compression.
- Send us the file as a composite with named Pantone Spot/Solid colors. Do not physically color separate the artwork into two pages or two files. This requires us to put the files/pages back together into one file which is exactly what you started with. Why make more work?
- Don't ask for a proof if you don't need one. If you've followed the instructions within this tutorial you will have sent us a file that does not need to be altered and will look exactly like the file you sent us. All we'll do is slap a “Proof” box on it and resend it back to you.
- Give your files a unique name. We get many hundreds of emails each day and invariably several customers send us a file called "bc.pdf". Our email server is setup to automatically download attachments so every time we get a file named the same as a file we previously had in our downloads directory it gets overwritten. We then have to find the original and redownload it. Please name your files using the following structure: company name - first initial last name; "jon doe plumbing - j doe.pdf" is a perfect filename.
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Full Color exceptions to the rules
- Spot Colors. You may use any CMYK color palette you'd like. You do not need to limit yourself to Pantone Spot colors although you should still never use RGB colors.
- Bitmap Resolution. A resolution 400 DPI is enough to print a 300 line screen off our DI.
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Emailing/Uploading
- Email us an actual file. Do not email us a link to your artwork or directions to an FTP site with your artwork. As indicated earlier our email system is automated and mostly unattended so orders that come in without an attachment are usually placed in our hold tray while we wait for you to send us an actual file. Please just attach your artwork and send it so our system can work to it's fullest potential.
- Do not email files over 10 megs. Files larger than 10 megs, and in many cases files only approaching 10 megs, will be rejected by the mail server. For larger files use our FTP upload. If your files are that large it is usually a good indication that you have not properly saved & compressed your artwork.
- Do not FTP files over 25 mb. Although all files combined may total more than 25 mb, individual files over 25 mb will be rejected by the FTP server. If your files are that large it is usually a good indication that you have not properly saved & compressed your artwork.
- You may Zip or Stuff your files. Please do not create self-extracting archives. For security reasons, we WILL NOT run any executable (EXE) files.
- Make sure all files being uploaded have the proper extension: PDF, EPS, TIF, ZIP, SIT. Files sent without an extension may be unusable.
- Remember to put all jobs into their own specific folder. First you must create the folder but you must also manually navigate to the folder you just created to drop your files into it.
- Do not close the browser window during the upload process. Large files may take an extended period of time to upload depending on connection speed, Internet congestion, etc.
- Verify that all files necessary have been uploaded and that they are contained within the proper folder.
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Order Form
- Be sure that all files have been uploaded to our server before submitting the order form.
- Fill out the order form completely and accurately.
- Do not group unrelated jobs or jobs that require different print methods (one flat job & one raised job) or ink colors (one Reflex Blue job & one Burgundy job) on the same order form.
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| Working with Software |
While we use a number of today's popular illustration and layout programs we prefer files to be saved in one of three formats: PDF, EPS, or TIFF format. Portable Document Format (PDF) files are preferred because of the ability to embed all fonts and images into the file, greatly minimizing the primary cause of problems with digital artwork.
Please click on the program of your choice for directions on converting your files to a preferred format. Again, please note that we do not want native files. If you follow the directions below you should be giving us the file exactly as we need it with very little need for adjustments on our end.
If you are using software that is not listed above your options are relatively limited. Publisher will allow you to save your file as PostScript but Publisher is not designed for the printing industry and this method fails on occasion. We regularly get Microsoft Word files as well. If Word is your design package then you will have to print to your Acrobat Printer using the “Press Quality” settings, cross your fingers, and hope that it works.
In any event do not hesitate to email us and ask what you should do with your software. That is preferable to sending us a file we can't use.
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BCT • 1130 West Geneva Drive • Tempe, AZ 85282 • 480-829-8890 • Fax 480-921-1231