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Home: Production: File Preparation

Design
If you have desktop publishing software and choose to design your book yourself, we recommend Quark or InDesign. If you are using MS Word you will need to PDF your file using Adobe Acrobat Distiller or we can typeset your file.

We base our quotations on the expectation that files will be provided to industry standards and if this is not the case it may result in additional charges.
The advantage of PDF files is that they help you to identify problems with your files and thus prevent additional charges and delays.

Supplying Native files (Quark, Indesign or Pagemaker)

Please supply the following:

• All screen and printer fonts used and any graphic files (EPS, TIFF)
• A diary printout of what is contained on the disk. (screen dump)
• Name of the program used and the file and the font names. Names of support files (images and illustrations)
• Printout of your final files. When appropriate mark colour separation.

If Southwood are to scan your photographs, place a low resolution scan in position and mark clearly that it is for position only (or provide keylines - see Preparing Your Photographs).
Remember that you should not attempt to email any file larger than 8mb so you can either FTP the file or send it to us on a CD with a hardcopy printout.

Supplying a PDF file
Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) is our preferred file format, however, very specific settings are required in Acrobat Distiller to generate the PDF correctly. See Ligare website www.ligare.com.au for distillers for CS2 and CS3. When you create the PDF we prefer 5mm trim marks to be included. If bleed is required add 5mm all round to the trim size. To correctly create a PDF it is essential that your original program is able to create Postscript files (.ps) or Encapsulated Postscript files (.eps), or .prn if using a PC.

To produce consistent results when creating PDF files use Acrobat Distiller as opposed to saving a PDF file directly from your page layout program (one exception is exporting from Adobe Indesign).

Steps to create a PDF
1. Postscript your original document from within the program used to create the document.
Mac: Select ‘File’ as the destination in the print window (generates .ps or .eps)
PC: Tick ‘Print to File’ in the print window (generates .prn)
2. Start Acrobat Distiller and select SWPHires from the drop down menu.
3. Open your Postscript file with Distiller left open.
4. A PDF file will be created at the chosen destination.
5. Printout the PDF & check carefully
Remember that once an Acrobat file has been produced, we are able to make very limited changes to text or images.

Preparing Your Photographs
If you are scanning your photographs yourself it is important that your scanner be set up correctly, otherwise the photographs will reproduce poorly. To ensure good reproduction the following guidelines must be adhered to:

• Scan all photographs at 300 DPI resolution with a D max 95% and a D min 5% (we will screen at 133 LPI for offset paper and 133 or 150 LPI for art paper).
• Line illustrations, etc should be scanned at 1200 DPI resolution.
• Remember, if the photo or illustration is to be enlarged, different specifications will apply, so contact us first.
• Do not supply JPEGs, GIFFs or RGB pictures.
• Minimise the resizing, cropping and rotating of images in your page layout program – use a program such as Adobe PhotoShop.
• After scanning, the photographs must be saved as a TIFF. Photographs that are to print in colour must be saved as CMYK (not RGB), photographs that are to print in black and white must be saved as greyscale.