Use our prepress checklist to get ready for print!

What is Prepress? Prepress refers to everything that happens to make sure a job is correctly prepared for printing. This is when you catch the errors that could hold up the job on press. For trouble-free printing down the line, it is important to get your design in the best shape possible before upload. Please follow the prepress guidelines below before uploading your project to Inkd.

For our purposes, prepress can be broken down into these 4 steps:

• Manually checking and adjusting your layout and graphics files
• Preflight
• Collecting your job
• Creating a preview PDF file

How to manually prep your files (step 1)

• Extend bleed artwork to bleed lines
• Check that important content is within safety margins
• Check and edit colors
• Check that process colors are CMYK (not RGB)
• Check that spot colors are converted to CMYK or, if desired, carefully defined and applied as spot
• Trash unused color swatches
• Check and edit fonts (with the help of Quark's "Usage" menu item or Adobe's "Find Font" menu item)
• Make sure there are no missing or inactive fonts
• Check that fonts are styled in their "true" form (in other words, unaltered by artificial "bold" or "italics" options in the application)
• Check that linked graphics are up to date
• Tidy by deleting unused elements, elements on the pasteboard, and empty boxes
• Check layers
• Make sure that the template layer only contains template elements
• Template layer is set to non-printing or turned off
• Artwork layer only contains artwork
• Create a color proof to check your document for color quality, spelling and layout.

How to preflight (step 2)

What is preflight? To preflight a job essentially means to check it for technical errors to make sure it is ready to print. The process involves running your layout file through preflight software, or a preflight plug-in, that systematically scrutinizes it for font conflicts, misused colors, missing graphic links, etc. — any issues that could be a problem for the printer.

• Note that preflight is an automated function, while manually checking that your document is correctly laid out can only be done by a human. That is why the two steps go hand-in-hand, and one cannot replace the other.
• The way you run preflight depends on what application you used for your layout file. As layout programs, InDesign and Quark have built-in preflight and/or job-collecting functions, while Illustrator and Photoshop files have neither.
• For some of the file formats we accept, here are the methods we suggest:
• For an InDesign layout, simply open the document and select "Preflight" from the File menu.
• Quark lets you "Collect for Output" from the Quark menu but not preflight. To preflight a Quark document you must use separate preflight software such as Markzware's FlightCheck.
• Preflighting will result in a report listing conflicts and errors with your files. This is normal. Part of preflighting is fixing errors and running it through again until you get a clean report.

Typical errors and how to fix them:

How to collect your job (step 3)

Collecting your job is an automated process for gathering all of the active components of your job — layout, graphics and fonts — into one new, neat job folder. As with the preflight procedure, the way you collect your job depends on the program your layout file was created in. QuarkXPress lets you "Collect for Output," and InDesign lets you "Package."

For some of the file formats we accept, here are the methods we suggest:

• For an InDesign layout, select "Package" from the InDesign File menu.
• For a Quark layout, select "Collect for Output" from File menu.
• After collecting your job, you will create a preview PDF and add it to the collected job folder.
• If you designed with fonts that you don't have commerical permissions to, please either:
  • buy the font and supply it, or;
  • Submit the design without supplying the font files. In this case, you would list the fonts in the uploading process.
  • Bear in mind that when a buyer opens your file, the non-standard font you used will be automatically substituted with a standard system font, causing re-ragging of the type. It would be up to the buyer to purchase the font you used or not.