What is meant by bleed?
Bleed is the area outside the trim area of a document in which graphical elements are printed. This area is then trimmed off, resulting in color going all the way to edge of the piece. If you didn't bleed elements and instead placed them up to the boundaries of the trim area, irregularities encountered during cutting might produce a piece where a thin line of unprinted stock shows along one of more edges. And that could ruin the overall effectiveness of the card's design. Standard bleed is 1/8 inch.
What is meant by linescreen?
Simply put, linescreen is how tightly the individual printing dots that make up a printed piece are placed on the paper. A fine linescreen like we use minimizes the appearance of the dots, resulting in a smoother image.
What is meant by CMYK?
Full color printing is generally done with only four colors; cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. CMYK is just another way to say process, or full color, printing. All elements to be printed must be separated into the four color channels. Scanned color images are RGB. At some point , they must be separated; either automatically on the scanner or manually in an image editing program. For more detailed information about color as it relates to the graphic arts, please visit Heidelberg's LinoColor Color Glossary.
I need cards but I can't design them myself. Can you help?
Yes. While the primary focus of our business is printing cards, we also offer design services for an additional fee. Please contact us with your specific need so that we may help you further.
Business Card Dimensions
Bleed Size: 3.54" x 2.05", 90mm x 52mm, 1062 x 615 pixels
Cut Size: 3.43" x 1.93", 87mm x 49mm, 1028 x 579 pixels
Finished artwork should use the full bleed dimensions for best results.
Resolution and Printing
Your artwork should be created at 300 ppi (pixels per inch) or 300 dpi (dots per inch). If your artwork is at a lower resolution than this, the print quality may be affected.
Software Templates
For your convenience, we provide Acrobat settings, and templates showing bleed, trim, and "safe" areas for popular design applications:
Adobe Acrobat - Download Distiller settings - 1 KB (recommended)
Adobe Photoshop - Download Photoshop templates - 5 KB (recommended)
Adobe Illustrator - Download Illustrator templates - 74 KB (recommended)
Adobe InDesign - Download InDesign templates - 790 KB
Accepted File Formats
iBizPrint supports a variety of file formats for uploaded designs.
For Business Cards - Premium, files must be smaller than 5 MB.**
Adobe Acrobat Document (*.pdf) (recommended)
Adobe Illustrator Artwork 8.01 (or higher) - (*.ai) (recommended)
Adobe Photoshop Image (*.psd) (recommended)
TIFF Image (*.gif)
PNG Image (*.png)
PostScript File (*.ps)
How can I reduce the file size of the artwork I want to upload?
Image editing software applications enable you to save your artwork in a format of your choice. In general, saving your file as a high resolution JPEG will help to reduce the size of your file while maintaining relatively high quality of your image when it is printed.
The following are tips for reducing file size using specific application software.
If you are using Adobe Illustrator™
1. Flatten the Illustrator file.
2. Open the .ai file in Photoshop and make sure when Photoshop opens the file it is 1063 x 614 pixels.*
3. Save the file as a .psd to upload.
*If your Illustrator file is too large when you open it in Photoshop, this means that you have an object extending beyond the art board. Open the file in Illustrator and make sure NO text or objects go past the black box. Resave the file and go through steps 1-3 again.
Tips on Image Size Reduction using Photoshop
To decrease size of a Photoshop file, flatten the file. If it is still too large, save it as a .pdf. Select encoding: jpeg. First select #12 quality. Save the .pdf and check the file size. If the file is still too large, try saving it at lesser and lesser quality until it is small enough to upload.
Tips on Image Size Reduction using other programs
If your file is larger than 4MB, you can try saving it as a PDF, JPEG or TIF format. These file formats compress images in different ways to achieve a smaller file size.
* PDF is a good choice for simple line art.
* JPEG reduces the number of pixels and will work well for photographs that are too large to upload. Experiment with different levels of quality when saving to JPEG to get the best quality possible at an acceptable file size (less than 4 MB).
* GIF compresses files by reducing the number of colours displayed in the image. Therefore, it does not work very well for color photos. It is best for online display.
* TIF is another recommended file format for good quality printing results.
Still need help? Contact customer support.
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