Graphica staff are friendly, easy going, happy people however the one thing that is known to reduce us to tears are files set up incorrectly. We are happy to advise you on this and be generally helpful, but we do reserve the right to charge extra for file set up should it become excessive.

Correct file set up is very important, as files that are wrong can lead to poof print quality and delays in supplying your finished prints. So.......

How to set up files for Graphica

In order to print your file it needs to be one of the following : EPS, PDF, TIF, JPEG or PSD. These files are cross platform (Mac and PC compatible) and are 'fixed', meaning its very hard for us to alter them.We prefer to receive the files in these formats however if you can't, we are happy to convert them for you. This MAY incur a file handling fee of $15 + gst and as we have to open the file and play around with it, we cannot guarantee that all your information will stay correct.

File Set Up Info:

1. The file should be supplied at the size you want it to print
2. All images, links, etc should be supplied
3. Fonts should be converted to paths in the original design programme, even if supplying a pdf or eps. If this is not possible, all fonts should be supplied.
4. Put crop marks and bleed where required.
5. The optimal resolution of images is 150dpi. Images between 100 - 150dpi should print ok. If your images are small (around A5) you should use 300dpi
6. We don't mind whether your files are rgb or cmyk. We use sRGB and US Web Coated (SWOP) CMYK colour profiles. Read below for more info on this.
7. If colour is really important, we recommend printing a test strip. These cost $10 + gst ($20 + gst on some special medias) and are great for checking that your colour is as expected.
8. We can receive your files on almost any transport method - CD,DVD, flash drive, compact flash card, 100MB Zip disk (remember them?), even iPod as well as email.
9. Please supply only the files to be printed so we don't get confused and print the wrong ones.
10. If in doubt - Ask!

Colour Management

Here's a subject that wars have been fought over! Although our printer uses extended cmyk inks to print, we are happy to receive files in either cmyk or rgb. An rgb file will be smaller than a cmyk file because its 3 letters not 4 (basically each letter is a colour channel - red, green, blue and cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black), so rgb has one less channel and is therefore a smaller file) so for large images rgb may be more convenient. Our standard colour profiles are sRGB and US Web Coated (SWOP) CMYK, although we are happy to use a different profile if you ask. These profiles seem to be the default settings on most design software, so if you don't change it, this is what your file should be set up as.

A word on Pantone colours - whilst we have no issue with rgb vs cmyk, pantone colours can cause us issues, as it is a different print process than cmyk. Our printer can print 78% of pantone colours, but you can guarantee that on that deadline critical job, the colour you pick won't be one of them. If you're designing for printing on our machine, please use the cmyk equivalent colour rather than the pantone colour (if you don't know what this is, call us with the pantone colour number and we'll tell you). If you're designing for another print process and converting the file for our system, we suggest converting the colours to cmyk.

If you understood every word on this page but have no idea what it all meant, don't worry! just bring in your file and we'll go over it with you to make sure your printing is the best it can be.