Avoiding Delays When Proofing

ARTWORK ISSUES ARE THE #1 REASON FOR ORDER DELAYS & EXTRA CHARGES. FOLLOW THESE 3 RULES:

1. Use Our Templates

2. Follow Our Artwork Guidelines - Read This Tutorial

3. Do Not Send Us Artwork Files That We Do Not Support
Click here to review our software requirements, listed earlier in this tutorial.

Getting Ready to Save Your Illustrator File:

To avoid hassles with fonts and missing images during pre-flight, before you save your Illustrator files:

• Convert all text to outlines
• Embed all images

1. Embed Your Fonts: (Illustrator) First be sure you have made backups. Now, make sure all your artwork elements and layers are unlocked, then from the menu bar, choose SELECT > ALL (select all). Now everything is selected. From the menu bar choose TYPE > CREATE OUTLINES (older versions say, "CREATE PATHS").

This turns all your text (which was looking up it's shapes and style via a font file in your system folder) into self-contained lines on the page. When CDman outputs your job you will never get a hold with "font files not found" error messages. Be sure to save a backup with fonts so that you can fix typos later if need be. You can not use the text tool to modify text once that text is outlined.

You can verify if the procedure worked by opening your Document Info pallet: WINDOW , DOCUMENT INFO (older version access this palette via FILE , DOCUMENT INFO, then click the top right arrow, fly out menu, and turn off the "Selection Only" check box, this will give you info on ALL the Fonts:

If you still see fonts listed after converting to outlines, some text is either locked on the page layout or on a locked layer. You can use the menu: Type , Find Font, to help you locate the text using a particular font.

FYI: If you click onto the canvas with the text tool, don't type anything, and then click out of the text entry box, the font you had selected would now show up as an empty node, but the font is recorded as required.  The document now has this font in use even though you didn't type anything and no visible characters would show.  The problem lies in pre-flight where the operator does not care to look at visuals.  How can they? They are only following the algorithm of the program which tells them,  a) you have a font in usage b) do I have the font file to print the characters?     Without converting text to paths you have to now include the all font files along with the main layout file.  But why would you? -you can just convert all the text to paths and not need to worry about any support font files. 

2. Embed your images: Linked images are convenient during the design phase since changing the image in Photoshop will dynamically change once you go back to Illustrator and see your changes. Once you are done and are ready to submit your final layout file, there is no need to keep these images linked since it is much easier to upload a single Illustrator or InDesign file.

First verify if you actually have linked images: (menu: window, document info, in CS4 its probably under File > File Info )

The document info palette is a very important tool. Use it to avoid problems. You can see in the above screen shot that we have a linked RGB image which needs to be converted to CMYK for printing and that it's resolution is too low. It should be minimum 300 dots (pixels same thing) per inch OR you shrink the image down in your canvas to a minimum 1/4 of its originally imported size.   ie:  72 dpi x 4 = 288 effective dpi which is passible.  * When pre-flight sends you a HOLD for 72 dpi, you can just say "Proceed as is" 

* Tip:  After you shrink down a 72 dpi image like a JPG to 1/4 its original size,  OBJECT > RASTERIZE @ 300 dpi then your image automatically flips to 300 dpi and we will not put a hold on your job.  We threshold at 200 dpi, meaning, any image that is below 200 dpi we will generally place on hold and warn you to replace the images or proceed as is.  Printing low res images looks really amateur so best avoid it.

Once you have verified your images are all good and your fonts are converted to outlines choose: File | Save As

Save your file using it's native *.ai (Illustrator) extension in the file name. The extension should NOT be PDF unless you know what a PDF-X file is.

Then, ensure the 'Include Linked Files' is checked:

If "Include Linked Files is greyed out, it means your images are already embedded and you can proceed.

By selecting 'include linked files' your saved document will now contain the images and therefore you do not need to include a folder of images, just the final Illustrator or InDesign file is needed.

A final step is to corral all your files and put them into a folder on your desktop.  Once in place compress the folder with ZIP or Stuffit and then upload.  If you followed all the steps in this tutorial you should see your proofs within 1 to 2 business days after submitting them. 

We fix artwork in the following ways:

• Our expert pre-flight analysis warns you of any issues from over 143 diagnostic checks and tests. 
• Because we like to avoid fonts, edits generally require extra fees.
• Design and adjustments are available on a case by case basis.  Please call us at 1-800-557-3347 and talk to sales about what we can do in a breeze and what is more challenging.  We give it to you straight and honest.  With over 30 years combined experience. We can help.