Help - Artwork

artwork storage

We do not keep your artwork indefinitely!

If we create artwork for you: then we will keep it in secure storage for 12 months. We may store it on our servers for longer than that, but it will no longer be backed up using our off-site disaster recovery storage. We do not guarantee the safe storage of your artwork: Inky will always give you a copy of your artwork. If you pay for it, it's yours and we recommend that you store this safely. This does not apply to artwork created using our on-line design applications.

If you upload artwork for a job: this will be available for you on line for up to 6 months. After this time it will be deleted and you will have to upload again. Please use the file management to delete any files that you no longer need.

bleeds

A "bleed" is an extra bit of the background graphics or pictures that we trim off when we finish your printing.

We need 2mm bleed all the way around if your artwork goes to the edge.

Don't understand? Just ask and we'll be pleased to help.

Top tip - don't put text too close to the edge (it doesn't look great and there is the risk of a little bit being trimmed off) and don't put fine lines (i.e. a border) too close to the edge.

colour

All of our printing equipment (lithographic, digital and large format) is computer controlled and calibrated to a pleasing colour balance. If you are using correctly calibrated desk top publishing software (i.e. Quark or InDesign) and display hardware, the colours you see on your screen should be a reasonably close representation of the final printed product. Otherwise, you will find that the colour corrected proof that we send you will be closer to the final printed item - although the type and configuration of your display monitor will limit how close this match is.

We are sometimes asked whether you can send in a previously printed sample to "match". Unfortunately, we can't do this at these prices. Most times your job will be "batched" (or "ganged" as the American printers call it) with other customer's jobs. Either your job was printed right last time or not. Sending us a hardcopy won't help as we can't alter the whole print run, or this would effect everyone else's colours!

formats

We accept:

PDF files
InDesign†
Illustrator†
Photoshop†
All Microsoft Office documents up to Office 2007*
Microsoft Publisher (to 2003)††
TIFF‡
JPEG‡

but we prefer Adobe PDFs! If you can create a PDF you will have much closer control over what we print for you. The default "press" profile will work the vast majority of time.

†As an Adobe Authorised Print Service Provider we have access to the latest versions of the Creative Suite. That does not necessarily mean that they are compatible with older versions of Adobe products! Unless you wish us to alter your artwork, you should always supply your artwork as a PDF file.

* Microsoft Office applications are not designed for commercial printing, and we recommend that more complex documents are created in a Desk Top Publishing application. We can create artwork for you if needed, please call the helpdesk to discuss this. Some Microsoft Office applications are really not print friendly - these include Powerpoint and Excel and we will make a charge if these need to be turned into something that we can print from. Please ask if in doubt - the advice is free.

††Some notes on Publisher. For some products on our site, we will not accept Publisher files (except with additional charges) and you must supply a PDF file. You should be aware that Publisher is not a "stable" format, i.e. we have no way of knowing whether all of the fonts, images etc., within your file are correct or not. For this reason it is always recommended that you create a PDF from your Publisher file as you are then certain that what you see in the PDF is what you send us!

If you do not have PDF creation software, you can create PDF files from Publisher in a couple of different ways:-

Download CutePDF from the nice folks at Acro Software Inc.  The standard version of this software is completely free to use and you can upgrade to the "Pro" version if you need extra features.   Many of our customers use this and we even use it ourselves on PCs without an Acrobat licence. There are clear instructions on their web site, please follow them!   Here is the link to web site for CutePDF:-
http://www.cutepdf.com

Clicking on the link above will take you away from inkylittlefingers.co.uk so if you want to open the link in a new window click on the following link
http://www.cutepdf.com

Alternatively follow the instructions in this Microsoft technical note:-
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en

Clicking on the link above will take you away from inkylittlefingers.co.uk so if you want to open the link in a new window click on the following link
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en

Please note that Publisher does have a pretty big "issue" with transparencies (apparently this is not a bug!) that mainly affects GIF and PNGs. Basically Publisher will create PDFs with thousands of 1px by 1px images. This will make your computer run very slow and it causes major pre-press problems for us. The way to fix this is to delete the offending images, remove the transparency on the original image files (i.e. in an image editing application) and then import them again into Publisher.

‡TIFFs and JPEGS are only really suitable for very small items, A5 at the largest. Make sure that they are at 450dpi as the fonts will look smoother at this resolution. For JPEGs, make sure that you use a "high" or "highest" quality setting.

is graphic design (artwork) included in these prices?

No, these prices are from your print-ready electronic original. We do offer a graphic design service, please contact us for a prompt and competitive quote.

(steps on to soap box) There's no such thing as "free artwork" - graphic designers have to eat too (no, really, they do). It's either included in the price of the leaflets (then why are you paying for it if you don't need it?) or is 60 seconds of drag and drop by an untrained someone armed with some free clip art (steps down from soap box).

proofs

We will send you one PDF proof via your user account on this site. There is no extra charge for this, it's included in your price. The PDF proof is colour corrected from RGB to CMYK if necessary. If you need to make changes and have another proof then we do make a small charge for this. If you want a hardcopy proof, we can send you a "colour layout" proof for a small charge (which varies depending on how many sheets are required and whether any "mock up" finishing is required). This will slow down the whole process and (except for digital work) is not a "contract proof", i.e. it is not guaranteed an exact colour and screening match to the on-press prints.

sending artwork

Simply log in to the site via the pink "admin" button on the top right, you will need to register if you haven't already done so. You can then use the upload facility to securely send files directly to our server. You need to remember to place an order with us as well (or at least phone us on 01452 751139), otherwise we can't do anything with your artwork! After the order is placed, you will get an email confirming when a proof is ready for you to view on-line.