Dealing With Printers! What File Formats Do They Accept?

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If you’re going to a printer to have them print high-quality, high-resolution print materials like book covers, postcards, flyers, brochures, magazines covers, posters and the like, then you’ll need to adhere to the following guidelines if you’d like to see your project(s) finished in an timely manner.

Nothing’s more upsetting than spending a lot of time designing your print material in a program or file format your printer won’t accept.

Do it right from the start and you’ll reach the finish line in record time! Here is a quick reference chart illustrating what programs you might use to create certain kinds of files, and specifically, what format levels you should save them in so your printer will gladly accept them:

File Description	File Format	Software Programs
Photographs, images, and graphics to be printed inside your book!	.TIF File Format Resolution = 300 dpi or higher (dpi=dots per inch) CMYK (not RGB) Color	Adobe® PhotoShop [TUTORIAL] Adobe® Illustrator [TUTORIAL] Adobe® Fireworks [TUTORIAL]
Book Covers, Bookmarks, Flyers, Posters, Postcards, Banners, etc.	.EPS File Format 300 dpi resolution or higher (dpi=dots per in.) CMYK (not RGB) Color Outline Fonts	Adobe® PhotoShop [TUTORIAL] Adobe® Illustrator [TUTORIAL] Adobe® Fireworks [TUTORIAL]
Books, Manuals, Workbooks,etc. (i.e., the text inside, etc.)	.PDF File Format Uncompressed Embed All Fonts 300 dpi quality or higher	Adobe® InDesign [TUTORIAL] Adobe® Illustrator [TUTORIAL] Adobe® Acrobat [TUTORIAL]

Here’s a quick list of file formats printers typically do not accept: .GIF., .DOC. (Microsoft® Word), , .PUB (Microsoft® Publisher) and practically any other Microsoft®. Typically, printers stick to industry-standard design programs created by Adobe. Sure, you could produce certain text-based documents in Microsoft® based programs and then convert those documents to PDF. That would be acceptable in some cases. Always check with your printer just to be safe.

How Do You Deliver Your Files To The Printer?

The two best ways to deliver your material to the printer is:

[1] ONLINE

Upload all your files (including fonts, images, text files, etc.) to your website server into a folder called “printer” or “pub”. Then, eMail the printer with a link (or FTP access to that folder) so they can download the files and start working on them. Done! Call them to be sure they got the files, then kick back and wait to hear back from the printer that your proof or order is done and ready for pickup (or mail).

[2] ONLINE SENDING SERVICE

You can use a free service called, www.YouSendIt.com. Large file transfers (of any kind: audio, video, picture graphics, text files, web files, etc.) are quick, easy and secure with YouSendIt. Their easy-to-use interface sends your sensitive information online safely. The recipient is sent an eMail with a link where they can click and download the file you just sent. It's a great tool for sending one file at a time.

[3] CD-Rom via Mail/In-Person

If you don’t have access to a web server, you could simply burn all the files you need to a CD-Rom and mail it to your printer (or stop by and personally drop it off). Make sure you call them afterwards to be sure they can read the CD-Rom. If they can, you’re set! Soon, you’ll hear the phone ring with (a) “We can’t read your files, please resend ...” or (b) “Your order is done! They turned out great! When can you come back and pick everything up?”

... not eMail! Unless it’s a simple .PDF document under 10MB. But typically, high resolution (hi-res) images and cover artwork winds up being over 10MB in size, and some even larger! So, in that case, uploading those files to a website server (whether its your own or your printer's) or burning your files to a CD-Rom and mailing them is your best choice.