exporting files to printer

[wes70]

Need some suggestions. In the past, Ive had 50/50 success sending pdf files (banners, vinyl, etc.) to printers. Colors were either washed out or completely wrong. After having these issues, I would send jpeg files with no problems. I know there may be some image quality loss, but my old eyes can't see the difference.
What do most of you prefer to receive when accepting a clients file for print?

 

[Jester1167]

Did you check the settings for your PDF's? PDF's are a package for raster and bitmap images. You control what happens to them as they get wrapped up. The settings may be converting your color settings and there are jpg compression and down sampling settings in there as well.

TIF is another option and is a lossless file type but produces large file sizes than .jpg's.


FYI, I took a class many many years ago and learned to only use .jpg's to export a file for it's final format (to print or web). Use your programs native file type to save and work on your project. Even using the highest quality settings when saving to .jpg will compress the file. If you open, edit and save to .jpg 10 or 20 times the compression errors add up and degrade your files.

 

[J Hill Designs]

I always send full size RGB jpgs to my wholesalers because I know the colors will be right. /shrug

 

[wes70]

Ill definitely check the settings when exporting to pdf, next time around.

I do design in rbg, I find the colors are more vibrant in coreldraw and true when printing directly (no rip) to my HP aqueous printer.

Thanks

 

[Morkel]

EPS files all the way with us. There are too many variables with PDF files not just in the settings you set yourself, but the settings your customers have used in supplying their files. Since we pretty much never just use the customer's supplied files as-is (we add info details on customer, job#, what printer, what laminate, etc, and of course print & cut rego marks when necessary) more often than not they're placed in Illustrator first. Exporting the print file (customer's supplied file + info) would often end up with image & vector data having different colour management, even if our PDF and Rip settings were bulletproof. So we started exporting as EPS files and rarely have problems (and when we do it's because idiot designers don't ever check their overprints or transparency settings). Yes, they're much bigger files, but they're reliable.

 

[myront]

We do 90% of our own printing. If all is vector and no fountain fills then eps. If combo of vector and raster or with fountain fills then rgb tif and sometimes CMYK tif. Every art file we receive will be imported to corel then exported out. Even jpg files will be exported as tif. 99% of pdf files are not setup properly for our printing.