Congratulations, you’ve made it through the whole book and are ready to send your job off to be professionally output! Of course you don’t want to get a phone call late at night from the print service provider telling you one of your pictures is missing. Or your fonts are styled incorrectly. Or the colors are too dense. And are you sure those colors were set as process, not spot? And the resolution is correct? And what about text that might have reflowed? And are the printer fonts included? And...? Hold it! There are too many things to remember all at once!
You’re not expected to keep all this in your head. This chapter contains a checklist to help you go through your job in an orderly fashion and make sure everything is correct before you send it to be printed or published.
Use the checklist on the following pages as a guide to make sure your job prints correctly. Blank lines have been added for you to add your own requirements. Feel free to photocopy this checklist and use it for each job. Or download an interactive PDF of the list at: http://www.peachpit.com/designintoprint.
Items marked OPT are optional items that you should consider checking. These are items that will not necessarily cause the job to print incorrectly, but they may confuse the person at the service bureau who opens the file. Rather than get a phone call asking questions, it’s better to make sure you don’t have any of these items in your file or on your disk.
_________ | Native files, images, and fonts on disk |
_________ | Placed images are in the same folder as the files that use those images |
_________ | Remove all unnecessary files (such as old files, images, fonts, and so on) from the disk OPT |
_________ | Report from the Collect for Output or Packaging commands |
_________ | Output specifications form |
_________ | Hard copy prints of final file |
_________ | Marked-up proofs for color jobs |
_________ | Phone number of contact person on label of the disk |
____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ | |
Page size is correct | |
_________ | No blank pages in the document except those that have been intentionally left blank OPT |
_________ | Page numbers are correct |
_________ | Unused colors are deleted OPT |
_________ | Unused styles are deleted OPT |
_________ | Remove elements on the pasteboard OPT |
_________ | No overflow text blocks OPT |
_________ | Page setup is correct |
_________ | No elements have been told not to print OPT |
_________ | Bleed is applied if necessary |
____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ | |
_________ | Number of colors has been verified with paper separations or separations preview |
_________ | No colors are defined using more than 300 percent total ink (check with the print provider or publication for the amount they prefer) |
_________ | Spot color names are correct |
_________ | Knockout elements are correct |
_________ | No actual artwork in the job uses the color “registration” |
_________ | All spot colors have been converted to process for a four-color process job |
____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ | |
No pictures are listed as missing | |
_________ | All RGB images have been converted to CMYK Or Print provider will convert RGB images to CMYK (check with them!) |
_________ | Grayscale and color images are at their correct resolution (2 × linescreen = ____) 300 PPI is the most common resolution |
_________ | Images have not been enlarged so the effective resolution is too low |
_________ | Line art has been scanned as 1-bit, not grayscale |
_________ | Line art is at proper resolution (up to 1200 ppi) |
_________ | Vector illustrations have not been reduced until their elements are too small |
_________ | No pictures are on unused master pages OPT |
____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ | |
_________ | Small typefaces do not have color tints (check with the print shop for the correct specifications for colored type) |
_________ | Small line weights do not have color tints (check with the print shop for the correct specifications for colored lines) |
_________ | No fonts are listed as missing |
_________ | If fonts are not embedded in the PDF, a note has been added stating what font is necessary for printing |
____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ | |