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“Proofing” is the creation of a reasonable representation of your booklet’s artwork that you can use to verify that we have not introduced any errors during the process of preparing the production file(s). Proofs are used to verify that artwork is the correct color, that artwork is in the correct position, that bleeds and safety/margins are correct, and that the pages of the booklet are in the correct order.

“Proofing” is the creation of a reasonable representation of your booklet’s artwork that you can use to verify that we have not introduced any errors during the process of preparing the production file(s). Proofs are used to verify that artwork is the correct color, that artwork is in the correct position, that bleeds and safety/margins are correct, and that the pages of the booklet are in the correct order.

We perform a “preflight” on your booklet’s artwork. A preflight involves inspecting and verifying technical aspects of the artwork including: page-size, presence of bleed, resolution of image data, properly color mode of artwork (e.g. CMYK, RGB, Indexed, B&W, etc.), etc. We also look for things such as honoring page margins (“safe areas”), position of page numbers, etc. that relate to the proper appearance of the booklet.

Please refer to our file set-up guideline page: file set up.

A soft-proof is a proof provided to you as a digital file that you can view on the computer or mobile device. The de facto standard for delivering soft-proofs is an Adobe PDF (“Portable Document File). It is recommended that you view the soft-proof using Adobe Acrobat software. Viewing a soft-proof PDF in a third-party PDF application or via a PDF plug-in on a web browser on a computer or a mobile device may not display the PDF properly.

A pdf soft-proof will be sent to you for review within 2-3 hours after we have received your file. We process proofs during normal business hours of 8 AM to 5 PM PST Monday through Friday and in the order the files are received. Please be mindful that the production time starts from the time you approve the soft-proof, and not from the time your place your order / send your file(s).

A hard-proof is a physical proof, i.e. a printed and/or laminated representation of your booklet’s artwork. We do not offer hard proofs of any kind.

You must provide 0.125in (~3.2mm) of bleed on all four-sides of each page of your booklet’s artwork. Bleed is extra artwork (background image, graphical elements, etc.) that allows for tiny misalignments during binding and trimming from showing up as “white leaks,” i.e. an area of unprinted paper.

You should maintain a margin of at least 0.2in (~5mm) on all four-sides of each page of your booklet’s artwork. The margin creates a “safe area” on the page where the artwork will not appear too close to the edge of the page nor will be cut-off when the bound booklet is trimmed during the manufacturing process.

Your artwork should only contains CMYK, grayscale (8-bit, single-channel) or B&W (line art, monochrome, 1-bit, etc.) color. Any other colors (e.g. RGB, N-Channel, Indexed, PANTONE™, etc.) will be converted to CMYK.

All color or grayscale images should be provided at 300dpi. Images of less than 300dpi may compromise final print quality.

B&W (line art, monochrome, 1-bit, etc.) images should be provided at 800dpi or higher.

Artwork should be provided as PDFs whenever possible since PDFs normally contain all the fonts needed for proper print reproduction through an process called “font embedding.” Our preflight process will identify font-related problems so that you can be informed and help us to resolve the issue. Often this involves you sending us the font(s) and/or the source files you used to create the PDF.

If your artwork consists of image-data only, there will be no font issues.

If your artwork makes of of Transparency effects these will be flattened. Sometimes the flattening process alters the appearance of the artwork where transparency is used. The soft-proof we provide you will show you how the flattened artwork looks like so you can determine if it remains true to your original intent or if you need to adjust your artwork.

There are several ways for you to send or upload your file to us:

1. You can Email the file(s) to us. This works well for files up to about 10MB. Email of larger files may cause problems.
2. You can set-up a free account on our website at any time before you place an order and upload your file(s) to it.
3. You can upload the file during the check-out process when you place an order on our site.
4. You can upload the file(s) to our Dropbox account. Let us know you want to do this and we will send you a Dropbox File Request link.
5. If you use a Cloud storage provider like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, etc. then you can send us a link to the file(s) so that we can download it. Note that depending on the Cloud storage provider you may have to set an access/permission setting to allow us to do this.

If you do not have Adobe InDesign there are a few alternatives available. Here they are in order of preference and fitness-for-purpose:

1. Page layout applications such as QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher, and Apple Pages.
2. Drawing/illustration applications such as Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Affinity Designer, etc.
3. Photo editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint, etc.
4. Word processing applications such as Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Write, etc.

The #1 and #2 alternatives give you greater control and flexibility in terms of laying out pages and including different type of elements (text, images, and graphics). They are also better at handling bleed, maintaining margins, and outputting PDFs. We recommend that you use a page layout program.

The #3 alternatives require extra attention be paid towards maintaining bleed, margins, and page-to-page consistency (e.g. placement of page numbers, position of common header or footer elements, etc.). You also need to be careful how you handle type/fonts. It is very easy to create files that all pure image data (i.e. no font data) which will compromise the final print quality of any text.

The #4 alternatives are fine for sending purely-text content. Placing of graphics in these types of applications usually result in color-mode and resolution issues. Bleed is usually not supported so work-arounds must be performed. In most cases we can salvage artwork supplied in a word process document and as a result, the appearance of the pages will be different.

We do not recommend that you use a word processing program.