Diamond Press - Printing Guildlines
Bleed
The edges of a document are called the bleed area. To prevent an unwanted white border from showing at the edge of your document, be sure to extend any background colours or designs all the way to the edge. bleede should be 3mm.
Safe Margin
The safe margins are borders that are definitely inside the place where the cut will take place. Please remember to keep everything that is not background colour within the safe margins to ensure none of it is cut off when your document is trimmed.
Trim Lines
Trim lines are the finished size of the document. The document is cut close to the trim line, but because of the mechanical tolerance involved in printing, the actual cut can happen anywhere between the bleeds and safe margin.
Digital Imaging
Your digitized images can come from a variety of sources such as digital camera scanner or the Web. These images should be saved at 300n-dpi 100% output for best results. It’s helpful to know that shrinking an image will reduce its resolution. For example, an image captured at 600 x 900 pixels has 150-dpi at 4” x 6”. However, it can be printed at 300-dpi by reducing its dimensions on the product to 2” x 3”.
Images from the Web
Images found on the Web are typically at a resolution of 72-dpi. This resolution is too low for quality printing. But images can be shrunk as explained above. Many images on the Web are also protected by copyright laws so it is important to be careful of this.
Converting Fonts to Outlines
Text can be converted to curves (paths) in some graphics programs. This will fix upload errors that result when fonts are not embedded in your file.
How to get the print as near to the original as possible
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) are the colours used in the printing process. Red, Green and Blue are the colours used by screen displays such as your monitors. Please also note that JPEG files are almost always in RGB. If you create your document in RGB then the colours will vary slightly in the final print.