We put together a one-page guide to give you a quick overview on how to meet our press-ready requirements. Additional information and instructions can be found below.
Technical quality tolerances are important. What are they? Manufacturing machinery produces high quality products but all manufactured goods have some degree of variance. Before you proceed with your order, you must read and sign-off on the ‘Technical Quality Tolerance’ documents to ensure you understand our manufacturing tolerances.
We accept PDF or Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files for custom bag artwork. We recommend PDF, and most any program can generate a PDF file format.
How to save a file as a PDFIf your artwork is larger than 300MB, you will receive an error when you try to upload the artwork to a project. Here are some steps to help you reduce your file size.
How to reduce my file sizeThese are the 2 Illustrator tips that will help you and us save time and space.
These are the 3 Photoshop tips that will help you and us save time and space.
File size reduction depends on how much imagery is outside the boundary. It may be many Megabytes or few.
For as many designs as you are ordering, you need to provide us that same number of files. Do not collect multiple designs in one source file, even if your layers are well-organized. Each file should only contain information for a single design. See our instructions for doing this in frequently used programs below.
How to save each SKU's artwork separately.You can either Export each page from your InDesign file separately, or export your multi-page PDF from InDesign, open that file in Acrobat, and Extract each page individually from there.
If you have built each SKU on a separate artboard in Illustrator:
Because our presses print using Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) inks, all elements of the design, including any linked images, must be in CMYK (Process) mode prior to sending your artwork. Please note, this can cause significant shifts in color; we recommend you allow time to carefully review and do any necessary color corrections before sending us the files.
How to set artwork color profile.Any color swatches you use should be set up in CMYK by selecting Process in the Color Type dropdown and CMYK in the Color Mode dropdown of the Swatch Options menu.
Go to File > Document Color Mode and select CMYK Color.
Go to Image > Mode and select CMYK Color.
All Spot colors need to be converted to Process before submitting any artwork files. From InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, you can convert a Spot color to Process by selecting Process in the Color Type dropdown.
When using a black background, or if large areas of your artwork are black, it’s important to ensure your black color swatch is 100% K (Black) and does NOT contain any Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow color values (a.k.a. 4-color Rich Black). Using a black swatch built in all four colors may cause quality issues during printing and production. Additionally, please DO NOT use the Registration color swatch in your artwork.
We require a minimum of 300dpi in submitted artwork, especially if your design includes any photographs or raster images. Anything less than that can appear blurry and pixelated. Don’t think that more is better, though – anything higher than 300dpi isn’t necessary, and will likely only mean a larger file size that takes longer to upload to our system. 300dpi is a safe “set it and forget it” for artwork success.
When you’re creating your design, you’re likely adding typography via a text tool, which uses font libraries on your computer. Because we can’t guarantee we have the same fonts you do, we need all text to be converted to outlines. Outlining text removes all font information from your artwork file and switches those editable letters into fixed, un-editable objects, which means we can print your text exactly as desired. Do this as a final step after you’re happy with how all text looks on your design.
How to convert text to outlines.If you’ve properly converted all the text in the document to outlines, there should no longer be any font information in the file. In Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, you can confirm this by going to the Type menu and selecting Find Font…
You should see a resulting window that says there are zero (0) fonts in your document. If you get a list of one or more fonts, there is un-outlined text that needs to be addressed.
INCORRECT:
This document still shows there are fonts in use.
CORRECT:
This document still shows there are NO fonts in use.
If you’re using Illustrator to set up your file, you’ll need to ensure all images are embedded. An embedded image is fully contained within the document or a part of the document, and is not solely a reference to another location.
How to embed files and images.Your linked images or files will automatically be embedded when you create your PDF document if you choose the [Press Quality] Adobe PDF Preset.
Your linked images or files will automatically be embedded when you create your PDF document if you choose the [Press Quality] Adobe PDF Preset.
Bleed is the area outside of the trim line that will get cut off. While it ultimately gets removed, it plays a critical role in the final presentation of your product. Designing for bleed makes sure your design, whether photo, graphic, or solid color, reaches all the way to the edge of your bag when it’s trimmed, avoiding unintended white edges.
A minimum of .0625” (1/16”) of bleed is required. We require you use our templates for your artwork, as they already include the required amount of bleed.
We recommend barcodes be set up with the standard white background with black bars for maximum scannability. If you choose to use a different and non-standard color combination, we strongly recommend you test the barcode with several types of scanners to ensure readability. We cannot accept responsibility for non-standard barcode presentations that end up being hard to scan.
Trim/Crop marks are hairline horizontal and vertical lines printed with your artwork that define where the page should be trimmed. Registration marks are small “targets” outside the page area used in some printing processes to align the different ink separations in a color document. Neither of these marks are necessary for, or used in, our workflow. Please do not include them in your press-ready files.
We offer white ink printing on a variety of substrates, including metallic, clear, kraft and compostable paper. White ink can be printed as the solitary color in the design, or it could be combined with full-color printing, with white as a fifth color in the CMYK process. Our white ink is semi-opaque so results vary depending on the paper stock.
White ink is most commonly applied as a base layer on metallic, clear, and kraft stocks. In these applications, white ink is printed first followed by cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks on top. In these instances, the white ink is used to block out the color of the paper or other substrate providing a white background or base. On clear substrates, white is printed under the entire design except for where the window is indicated, thus providing a way to showcase the product inside of the package. On metallic substrates, white ink is printed to block out the areas of your design that you do not want to appear as metallic.
It is best to create a separate white ink layer on top of all of the other layers in your file. A good color to use to indicate the white is Magenta or another color that stands apart from the rest of the design. It is also helpful to name the color swatch ‘White’.
If you are unable to setup your file for white ink printing, we do have a prepress team that can set it up for you but if your design requires an extensive white layer setup, additional charges may apply.