Creating Print-Ready Files
Full Bleed Images Perfect Binding Booklet Binding Exporting for Issuu.com Trifold leaflet
Preparing to Print As professional illustrators, you are expected to make work to a professional standard. That means a print-ready file should have the following: -An appropriately sized bleed. -Crop marks. -An appropriate resolution for the kind of print you are making. -An appropriate layout for the format of the final piece (if its a book, what kind of binding will you be doing?) -An appropriate colour mode for the final output (CMYK for most printers, RGB for Large Format and Giclee printing). These factors are all things that you will need to consider and include in every image you make. We expect you to demonstrate that consideration in your practice even if it is a digital submission of a file that is just intended for print. So, in order to prepare your files, you will need to use InDesign! This hand out is intended to give you the specific instructions for preparing to print for the most common scenarios you might encounter: •Standard single image printing e.g Posters, folded brochure, book covers •Printing for perfect binding e.g. Hardbound books, childrens books •Booklet printing e.g. Staple bound zines, booklets, comics Before you start making final illustrations, we recommend you make your InDesign file first! Then you can easily measure a page including the bleed to get your measurements needed for your Photoshop or Procreate canvas.
Bleed The bleed is an extended area of your illustration, that will get trimmed off post print. Crop Marks Print marks that show where to trim your printed file down to size. Resolution The standard resolution for printing is 300dpi. High quality printers can print much higher than this when needed. Colour Mode Standard printers print in CMYK. High quality printers often have more than the 4 CMYK ink cartridges, so can replicate the RGB colour gamut better. Try to avoid dwitching between colour modes; if you know your image will be printed, work in CMYK from the start. Print with crops + bleed
Trimmed print
Starting in InDesign Page size This should be set to something that can be printed on your chosen print device at a 100% scale. Remember that most printers cannot print to the entire size of a piece of paper, there is a “printable area” that is smaller than the overal size of the paper. You must allow for some space to print the bleed and crop marks. This is usually an extra 10-20mm additional to the size of your image. So, if you are printing a single A4 size image (210mm x 297mm) you will need allow for a total print size of 230mm x 317mm. This size image will not fit on an A4 piece of paper, so you would use A3 when printing, remember, the bigger the sheet, the more £££. Pages You can set the number of pages you need here, or add them later in the PAGES panel. Facing Pages This controls the view of the document layout as spreads or single pages. If it is ticked your pages will display as spreads. If your are woking on a book, it is how the book will look when open. Margins Margins are guides marking the inside of your pages, imagine it as a safe zone to keep text and details awat from the edge of your page. Columns and Gutter Ignore for now, you can edit later Bleed (ignore slug) Your bleed should be set according to the size of your printed image. Images up to A4 need a 3mm bleed. Images A4 to A3 need a 5mm bleed Images A3 to A2 need a 5mm bleed. Images above A2 need an 8mm bleed.
Full Bleed Image 1. Create your document to the size neededremember to add the bleed before you click create 2. Use the Frame tool (F) to drag a frame across the page, going to the bleed perimeter- this is shown in red in InDesign 3. File>Place to add your image into the frame, resize as needed. Ensure your images goes into the bleed (red perimeter) You can add multiple pages to one document if creating multiple full bleed images; a series of posters for example. Work in InDesign for any additional text/ assets 4. To export File> Adobe PDF Presets> High Quality Print In the Export PDF panel, ensure you select ‘Pages’ Choose Marks and Bleeds from the left of the Panel and tick ‘Crop Marks and ‘Use Document Bleed Settings’ then Select ‘Export’. Your file should look like this! with Crop marks dipping into your image.
Perfect Binding Perfect binding is a method of presenting a very professional looking book. Easy to print, harder to bind. It is particularly good for books with lots of pages, and specialty covers. You can learn perfect binding with Joseph in the Bindery here at AUB, or pay at Uniprint to do it for you. We also have the materials and equipment in our studio too. Pages are printed double sided on sheets, in chronological order. Perfect binding relies on glue to hold separate sheets of paper together in a book and as a result it creates a pronounced valley in the middle of every spread. This valley cannot be opened perfectly flat like a saddle stitch or signature binding. As a result, you must pay close attention to the space you give content on the inside edges. As each page is printed separately onto a single side of paper, and then all four sides are trimmed, it is important to retain bleeds on all four sides of every page. When you have bound your pages, this is called a Book Block. You can then wrap your book block with a soft or hard bound cover.
1. Create your document to the size neededremember to add the bleed and ensure ‘facing pages’ is ticked before clicking create. 2. Open the ‘pages’ panel from the left, you should see a preview of small double pages. Page 1 is always on the right- this could be your front cover, and end page, or the first page on the right when opening a book. 3.Use the Frame tool (F) to drag a frame across each page, going to the bleed perimeter to the centre of the page- this is shown in red in InDesign. If you have created an illustration that goes across the double page spread, drag the frame across both pages, up to the bleed perimeter. 4. Add in your illustrations to each page- they should be creating double page spreads, recreating how the book will be read. Ensure that your frame edge/ image sits exactly on the centre line where your pages meet like this not like this
I have created an 8 page document and am happy with my layout. I have checked the images are aligned in the centre valley, and they are extended out to the bleed. To export for perfect binding i will export as single pages- this will break up my speads once exported and will show each image on a seperate page. Remember page 2 will be printed on the back of page 1 etc. File> Adobe PDF Presets> High Quality print In the Export PDF panel, ensure you select ‘Pages’ Choose Marks and Bleeds from the left of the Panel and tick ‘Crop Marks and ‘Use Document Bleed Settings’ then Select ‘Export’.
Your file should look like this! with Crop marks dipping into your image, and all your spreads now on seperate pages. This is a print ready file ready for printing houses. If printing with Uniprint, this is what is expected.
Booklet Printing Booklet/Saddle binding is where a single sheets of paper are folded in half, nested, and stapled or stitched together along the spine. This is a great way to present a book in a fast and cheap bound presentation, Harder to print, easy to bind! It is very useful if you want your spreads to lay flat without loosing any content down the valley of the page spread. There are a few things to look out for though, such as number of pages, page size, and bleed. Your booklet page total will need to be a multiple of 4! Be aware that the more pages you have, the bigger the creep.
Creep Creep refers to the shift in paper that occurs when the document’s pages are folded inside each other. The pages on the inside will be pushed out due to the paper stock thickness of the page son the outside- these will be trimmed off after binding. If you do not account for creep for saddle-stitch booklets, the content in the center of the booklet will be closer to the edge of the page than those at the beginning or end. The same goes for repeating elements such as page numbers, tabs, borders and more. To avoid this you could create saddle bound signatures, or perfect bin instead, or use the ‘creep’ adjustents when exporting.
Example If you want an A5 booklet, you will be printing spreads that are equal to A4, add the bleed an crop marks and it will mean you print on A3 sheets of paper. You will need a printer than can print double sided; the usual maximum size for this is A3- therefore to booklet bind you need to keep in mind the total double page spread size, and if that fits inside an A3 sheet.
If getting your booklet printed externally or through Uniprint, they will have the software to reorder your pages correctly in order to booklet bind. To only export for booklet binding i will export as single pages- this will break up my speads once exported and will show each image on a seperate page. File> Adobe PDF Presets> High Quality print In the Export PDF panel, ensure you select ‘Pages’ Choose Marks and Bleeds from the left of the Panel and tick ‘Crop Marks and ‘Use Document Bleed Settings’ then Select ‘Export’.
To booklet print yourself, you will print directly from InDesign If you wish to print a mock up in the studio, you can do this via release printers around campus. File>Print Booklet You will need to change the print settings first.
Setup> Print settings Choose Release print Under Setup, choose your paper size and orientation. My booklet is A5 portrait, so to print a spread, it will need to be on a landscape A3 sheet. keep the scale at 100%, but ensure you choose the page position as centred. If it is not centred, your crop marks will not line up when printed double sided.
Go to Marks and Bleeds, and ensure you tick Crops Marks and Use Document Bleed Settings. Click OK
You need to ensure you have 2 up Saddle stitch selected. Adjust for any creep if needed.
Now choose Preview from the left of the panel.This will give you a preview of how your pages will sit on the A3 Page.
Scroll across the panel to see your pages in their new paginated order. The only spread that will look the same will be your centre spread, this is the last spread in the preview (pages 4+5 in this example) The pages have a highlighted number over them, this correlates to their Indesign page number; an 8 page booklet should look like this
If you need to resize any pages, it will show as a warning and your preview will have red over it. You will need to go back and adjust the page size, scale or orientation. Before printing you will finally need to check the binding location. Go to Print settings> Printer Drop down the middle menu to Finishing If you are printing landscape, you will choose Short Edge Binding. This means the Printer will flip the paper from that edge. If you are printing portrait, you will choose Long Edge Binding
If you print and your pages are upside down, this is most likely because the binding location needs to be adjusted to the correct edge.
Happy Printing!
Exporting For Issuu.com
If you want to showcase your work digitally you can create interactive books on Issuu.com These books can be embedded onto websites, showcase on social media, or downloaded as PDFs. they work well as they can include Hyperlinks to allow the reader to easily access online content directly from your book. You simply need to export as pages, with NO crop marks or bleed. File> Adobe PDF Presets> High Quality Print ensure ‘Pages’ is ticked and export!
Create an Account with Issuu.com and upload your pdf. It will then show as a page turning book ready to publish live, you can add linksm descriptions and embedding options.
https://issuu.com/hmummery/docs/issuu_test
Trifold Leaflet If you are making a trifold leaflet, you will want to creat a 6 page document, that can be printed as a 3page spread, back to back. 1. Create your document to the size needed- remember to add the bleed before you click create 2. Go to your Pages Panel, and choose the 3 line menu. Untick ‘Allow Document Pages to Shuffle’
Once you have unticked Allow Document Pages to Shuffle, you can click and drag the pages from within your Pages panel, and move them up next to page 1- this is your 3 page spread
You will need to do this with pages 4, and 6, for the inside of your trifold leaflet. Add in your images and text etc until you are ready to export. File> Adobe PDF Presets> High Quality Print ensure you have Spreads Selected. Go to Marks and Bleeds and ensure you have selected Crop marks and Use Document Bleed Settings. Export.
Now it is ready to be printed on a single sheet double sided, or ready for Uniprint. The middle crop marks denote where your page folds are.
BA (Hons) Illustration, Arts University Bournemouth