: Queries from Printers about my booklet created with photoshop, please help I sent my artwork for print and they have returned it with a few queries. I would be very grateful if anyone could

@Si6392903

What your printer is asking for is standard requirements for print-ready files. Since you are using Photoshop, some things might be a bit more complicated to adjust; we have no idea what your layout looks like but you obviously did a layout in Photoshop and sometimes it's better to use Illustrator, InDesign, QuarkXpress, etc.


1) No bleeds , no trim marks in the artwork


It's not clear if your printer wants NO bleed and NO trim marks or if he's asking you to add them. But you should know because you either added them or not.

If you don't know what are crop marks: They are marks that indicate where the paper should be cut/trim. You'll probably need to add them manually in Photoshop or import your design into an InDesign file or Illustrator, and add them there; it's more precise actually.

TO READ:

Why do some printed documents have those target-like lines in their corners?

Bleed: This is the extra part of the design that goes beyond the trim marks and they're necessary if you're printing a document that has no white borders or where the design goes to the edges. Your printer might have a list of requirements about how much bleed they need for that particular project.

TO READ:

How can I determine how much bleed to use?


2) Small elements prepared in CMYK colours. Printing from that file may
cause those elements to be unreadable, or making them blurred. This
effect is occurring due to standard misregistration in offset printing
method.


We don't know what your design looks like but printers usually require small elements to NOT be in what's called "rich black". If the small elements are in black, make sure it's 100% black only (K) and nothing else. if there's no small elements in black that are "rich" then ask your printer.

TO READ:

What CMYK values should I use for rich black, and how should I handle tints/shades?


3) To preserve high quality of printing could you please set all black
(now prepared in cmyk) texts and logos to outlines. (not as a image)
and prepared in black only


Again, make sure your black is black only for small texts.

What CMYK values should I use for rich black, and how should I handle tints/shades?

Normally, you should send flattened files when working in Photoshop.

When you send a file to your printer or anyone, they don't have the fonts installed on your computer... So you need to "vectorize" them so they can't be edited but also to not have to send the font files to the printer.

Since you are in Photoshop (worst software for text quality, by the way), maybe you should consider importing your file into Illustrator to transform your text in vector. Then you can use the "create outline" in Illustrator to make that text not editable as your printer asks. Vectors have a higher printed quality than raster images (Photoshop.)



How to keep the text in vector in Photoshop without rasterizing it or flattening the layers when exporting to PDF?



For your next print project, read about the quality benefits from using a real publishing software like InDesign or QuarkXpress. Photoshop should only be used for your images, calibration, photomontages and special effects.

The project you're submitting might be more work for you right now because you did it all in Photoshop but you can save yourself some of the trouble by using another software more adapted for this kind of work and won't need to spend much time converting your file into another!

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