The most critical step in producing top quality results is to plan your project thoroughly before committing your work to print. On this page we listed information you will need to avoid most of the potential pitfalls. May we suggest that you take the few minutes required to read this section as it will help you make the best use of our service.

Software supported
Our preferred file format is Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format), however although our workflow requires us to send work directly to our printers in PDF format we do carry a very wide range of DTP and presentation software both on PC and Mac platforms, and our operators are fully conversant in producing excellent results from them all. If your favourite package is not listed you can call us on 01245 231900 or email sales@offsitegroup.net to check on its availability.

Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe PageMaker
Adobe Photoshop
Corel Draw
Corel WordPerfect
Macromedia Freehand
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Powerpoint
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Word
Quark Xpress
Xara Studio

Setting up your document
The maximum paper size for digital print (other than poster and exhibition stand printing) is SRA3 (450mm x 320mm). You should not, unless you have consulted us first, set your page size to be bigger than A3 (420mm x 297mm). When you are producing artwork please supply it to us ‘one up’ as opposed to ganging several up together. We will impose (plan up) your work to best suit our printers.

Empty pages?
When you provide us with your artwork for brochures, reports or presentations please make sure you have included blank pages where they are needed. For example if you have produced an 8 page brochure of which the inside front and back have no content make sure you still include them in your document.

Let it Bleed!
Remember, if you are using a DTP as opposed to a presentation graphics package, that if an image or colour runs off the page in any direction, you must give us some ‘spill over’ to avoid having a possible unwanted white line when you print is guillotined. This 'bleed area' should be 3mm on all sides.
See diagram below.

Colours
All digital colour printers work on the process colour model (CMYK). Therefore it should be noted that colours specified as spot colours using the pantone colour system will be converted to CMYK and the colour may change accordingly.

Images (size and file types)
To get the best out of digital print, bitmap files (TIF, JPG,BMP, GIF etc.) should ideally be 300dpi resolution at the size they are being used in your document. Smaller sized files can still work and produce acceptable results. Where possible we recommend bitmaps are saved as CMYK for best colour reproduction.

When creating images for large format printing (larger than A3) your bitmap files should be no smaller that 150dpi at print size. If you decide to produce an artwork at half size remember that double the size of any included bitmap (300dpi) and don't forget to tell us that you have produced your artwork at half size.

Fonts
We do hold a large library of fonts for both PC and Mac. In order to process your work as efficiently as possible we do recommend that all fonts used be supplied along with your artwork. If you are supplying a PDF file make sure that the option to embed all fonts has been selected.

Media
If you prefer not to use our FTP site to download your work to us, we can take your files on any of the following media:
                             Zip Drive    CD R    DVD    USB Key

Also see banner stands specification