Guidelines for print

I have decided to send off my broadsheet to  the newspaper club printing, I feel that this will be the most efficient and I have seen other people use this service and there newspapers turned out well. 

And so I read into the specific guidelines for the broadsheet printing so that I knew my mandatories before I begin. I will be using InDesign to design the actual document and so I want to be within the regulations. 

Here are some do’s and don’ts for working with colour:

Black and white

If you have black and white images, they tend to look punchier as CMYK, not greyscale. Some people prefer greyscale though. With digital printing, it’s not really possible to get a true, deep black, so avoid large dark areas if this would be a problem.

Pale colours

Light colours tend to look even paler in print than they do on screen.

It’s best to avoid any colour that is under 30% ink coverage if you want to make sure that it is visible in print.

Dark photos

Dark photos can lose their depth and look a little ‘flat’ in print. Also remember that dark areas will show through onto the other side of the page.

Skin tones

Some colours are particularly hard to reproduce using a CMYK printing process. In particular blood reds, bright oranges, skin tones and dark purples can be difficult to match against the colours in your PDF.

Resolution

For the best results we recommended that images are a minimum of 150 dpi but no more than 300 dpi.

Newspaper Club PDF Requirements:

Where possible, use the PDF/X-1a:2001 preset

This creates the simplest kind of PDF, and takes care of almost everything that could cause issues at the press.

Export your file as single pages, in reading order

Your PDF should read in the same order that you’d read a standard newspaper (from front to back). Make sure the pages in your file are single pages, not spreads (two pages joined together).

Margins and Bleed

Make sure your document has the margins set up correctly. We can’t print tabloids or broadsheets that have artwork in the margins. Minis must have a 5mm bleed around the outside of each spread.

Image resolution above 150 dpi, maximum 300 dpi

We recommend you set the image resolution to a maximum of 300 dpi — anything higher and you’ll make your file slower to upload, without any improvement in quality. You may start to see some pixellation below 150 dpi.

All images must be CMYK (no RGB or Spot Colours)

RGB images will be automatically converted to CMYK before printing. It’s better if you take care of this so you can see how the colour balance is affected, but if you’re not sure how, we can convert these for you. We can’t print spot colours.

Flatten transparencies

Some transparencies and effects will not print. You should flatten any transparencies within your document, as they may not print as expected, and could appear differently in print to how they do in your PDF. The PDF/X-1a:2001 preset will do this for you.