Hi mpjx, welcome to the forum. No crop marks, No separations. Your printer should be able to deal with it fine. [img]/emoticons/cool.gif[/img]



'You don't like your job, you don't strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.' H. J. Simpson

Thanks Kool!

Hi MPJX.
I'll always recommend to my clients who are sending HiRes PDF's over for printing to include crop marks with 3mm bleed. That way there can be no confusion about the final size of the job. If you send the job over minus crop marks then the pre press have no idea wether what you are sending has bleed included or is final size (bleed not included).
I agree no seperations. Also we here prefer it if the PDF is centred on the page, just makes it alot simplier when dropping it into our imposition software.

Cheers

I agree with kirby, crop marks will narrow the margin of error. make sure to add to the width of your pdf in the setup to compensate for the crop marks when you print the pdf

I am not sure about this but my concern would be weather the job is a spot color job or a 4 colour process job. If it's a 4 colour process job then no seperation is still good. But what if it is a spot color job? Does the imposition software still pick up the spot colour on the PDF? Cuz I know quark doesn't pick them out. I just need some ********ing....

If there is a problem, there is always a solution!

You'll have to ask your printer about that, as it all depends on what imposition software they use. Some printers import the PDF's into Quark then postscript to their impo software/RIP which will then not recognise the spot colours. We use a system called Trueflow which handles PDF, EPS or Postscripts direct and keeps all the spot colour information. Best bet mate is to call your printer and ask how they prefer the file to be sent.

Actually I have tried to do the following....

1.) Spot colour info are saved in the PDF....
2.) Imported in Quark
3.) Printed as 'compositie' instead of 'seperation'
4.) on the RIP preview... Spot colour seperation with colours! (normally it did be in B/W if did it in 'seperation')

Interesting eh?!

If there is a problem, there is always a solution!

Thanks for all your help with this. I guess is comes down to the same thing nearly everyone says, 'Talk to your printer!'

I work for a printer and we usually prefer to receive files from the designers in separations AND composite. The composite gives us something to compare to and the separations show how each color is setup. It then places the responsibility on the designer to make sure it separated correctly and therefore there are less mistakes. This of course is mostly for SPOT colors. CMYK usually doesn't need a separated PDF since the output we do will separate it auto. Crop marks and registration are always good because, again, it is less chance of error. Printers like it when they don't have to do any work to setup the file. If they can just import it and output it they are much happier and usually they get cleaner (less mistakes) results. Of course talking to your printer or checking their website is always recommended too. They may have specific distiller profiles or other such things for you to use. Good luck!

When I die, I have a free ride to Heaven! I will have alreadydone my time in Hell...at the local printshop!!

Hello I am a newbie on the site but have been in the pre press design industry for 10 years. I'll put in my 2 cents worth here. Since you dont know what type of press or printer that will be used I would take the high road and print to distiller in composite and then the composing department at the printer will either print seperation to an image setter or print seperations to laser printer to be sent to camera. Just so you know how it works the seperations will be seen as grayscale because that is not the final product. They will make plates from the seperation then apply the proper color ink to that plate for that color. Spot color will only use 2 plates blk and the spot color. So for you to try and send outputs for every scenario that they might be equiped for and might decide to use like web press, or manual press, film output, or dry media. You would be making more work for yourslef than needed when it dosent cost any less or save anyone any time at the printer.