Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Green printing tip no. 12: How to prepare files for your next Green Digital run?

Today we have another new tip on our weekly series of green printing tips, where we bring you in collaboration with Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer.

Today Greg is talking about the preparation process on your side when it comes to digital printing.

How to prepare files for your next Green Digital run?

Tip #12

Digital printing has increased my Green printing sales. Most of our clients are smaller green entrepreneurs, and many are brand new to printing in general. I get a lot of questions from these young entrepreneurs, who want to do the environmentally correct print job, but struggle with preparing the files for us. This is also a good review for the seasoned designer.

When preparing your files, that have solid pantone colors in the graphics, do "not" convert your files to CMYK. Most designers that know digital is printed in CMYK or RGB, think they need to convert the files to what they think we need.

But, we prefer you don't do that. Our pre press equipment will automatically convert your files to what we need. We prefer to see your pantone color(s), and we then have your colors as a guide, as we do the conversion ourselves.

Sometimes, our equipment might convert to RGB, and sometimes your digital pictures will be printed as RGB automatically. You wouldn't be able to foresee that we prefer that option.

We want to make being Green easy for you. We will do the extra work.

The same holds true on printing our 100% PCW or Tree Free business cards. Just give us 1 up files. Don't impose them for us. The imposition is automatic.

The only thing that can hold you up is forgetting to add 1/8" bleed when the ink goes to the edge of the sheet. And, don't put your copy closer than 1/4" from the edge. Remember - digital printing needs a little margin.


If you have any further questions following our tips, or you have a specific question you want us to address, please email us to info@ecolibris.net .

Links to the last three green printing tips:

Green Printing Tip #11 - What are your green options when it comes to promotional items?

Green Printing Tip #10 - Are you buying environmentally sound business cards?

Green Printing Tip #9 - What to look for when selecting a green printing vendor?

You can find links to all the tips we published so far on our green printing tips page, which is part of our green printing tools & resources.

You can also find further valuable information on Greg Barber Company's website - http://
www.ecofriendlyprinter.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing