Advantages of Making PDF Files
for a Commercial Printer

Printing companies encourage PDF art files as they avoid the many common pre-press problems and speed up the processing time of your printing project. Some printing companies even charge extra when native files are supplied instead of PDF's.

Properly making a press-quality PDF for commercial printing can be challenging if you are unfamiliar with the settings in the dialog boxes. Once understood you will ensure that your artwork is very unlikely to print improperly at the printing company.

1. Type Fonts are Embedded - many pre-press issues are related to font issues. Embedding the type fonts into a PDF file eliminates the need to outline or gather up and supply the associated fonts to the printing company.
2. Embedded Images - linking images in a document speeds the opening and editing of a digital file, but you must supply all of the linked images too. Images are embedded into PDF files, making providing them unnecessary.
3. Small File Size - PDF files are MUCH smaller than the native art files, and without any compromise in quality. Often the native art files are much too large to be emailed, but a PDF of the same artwork can easily be emailed.
4. Portability - PDF stands for "Portable Document Format." Native art files, when launched on a computer different from the one it was created on, could potentially open differently. Professional graphic design software, such as those made by Adobe, normally warn you if there is a problem, such as missing fonts, images, plugins, etc., but some software programs do not. PDF files reliably open on any computer to look exactly as the author intended.

Click here for information about how to properly make a PDF file
with crop marks and bleed for a commercial printing company

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