Technical Settings, Octopus Printers and Stationers, Falmouth1

Correct Settings for supplying digital files for Octopus

IF YOU ARE SUPPLYING your own origination, please ask for advice before preparation. - Our systems are very specific and if things need sorting, better to do it at the start!

For Flyers, Leaflets or Posters save as PDF files if to be printed out on A4 or A3. If you require say A5 Leaflets or Compliment Slips supply 3-up on A4. PDF files cannot be altered by us in any way as they are locked files.

If you use a MAC, save files as EPS or otherwise JPEG. For business cards only supply 1-up; we will paste the file to fill a sheet and then cut from our crop marks.

If using a PC preferred files are set in Microsoft Publisher. Otherwise supply as JPEG or TIFF. If you wish to print on two sides supply both pages on one file, not two separate ones.

We can print on SRA3 and SRA4 on some stocks at a supplement if job needs to "bleed off". Crop marks must be shown on this type of work. When printing there is a white border on all sides.

Bleed

YOU ARE PROBABLY used to loading up the printer with paper and when it comes to printing simply selecting the paper size to print on and hitting the print button.

Most office type printers are designed for letters and will come with minimum margins that your document has to print within.

Whilst this is OK for letters and stationary it does not help if you have a brochure design that needs to print all the way to the edges.

Printers have been handling this by 'bleed' for a long time now. Bleed is allowing the images on your page to bleed over the document edges. Then when a machine cuts the paper the cut will be within this bleed area and you won't get your image ending before the cut.

The more professional design packages allow you to specify bleed in the printer set up options. Most people then set up page guides on there document so that they can see where they need to bleed an image to.

Suppose for example your design contains an image that is used as a background and fits perfectly to your page. To cut your pages to the right size we use accurate equipment to do the cutting for us.

You would find it unacceptable to see a one tenth of a millimetre stripe running down the side of your page.

If you set your images to flow to the bleed limits then any cut will be within this and your images won't have 'white lined'.

Type Area

LIKE THE BLEED AREA but this time on the inside. This should be set within the page and is allowed for in case the cut is inside the page area. To ensure that none of the content of your page or 'page furniture' etc. are within a cut area you set inner guides.

Inner guides have now been added. The content of your page is now positioned within the type area. These guides also should be set at 3 mm.

Note: In the same way that bleed covers all the outside of the finished document the Type Area is 3 mm inside the finished document.

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Technical sample for placing text on page

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