Artwork Information Guide
Artwork Standards:
The quality of your imprint begins with your artwork. All orders requiring production art should include black and white line artwork. We recommend camera-ready and digitally produced art for the cleanest, sharpest imprint. This can be supplied by your graphic designer or advertising agency.
Adobe Illustrator EPS (preferred):
Save all native Illustrator or Freehand files as an EPS. The file must have all fonts converted to outlines. This should be a vector file. A vector file is resolution-independent—that is, it can be scaled to any size and printed on any output device at any resolution without losing its detail or clarity. Don’t import Photoshop or Corel Draw files into Illustrator.
Preferred: Vector art with fonts converted to outlines.
Not Preferred: Placed image (ie JPEG, TIFF, BMP)
Pantone ® Matching System (PMS) Color Chart:
To see a Pantone (PMS) color chart, click here.
PMS Color Chart Sample
Raster Art (not recommended/acceptable):
Continuous tone images, on the other hand, are resolution dependent. When you change the size of an imprint, you change the quality. Enlarging a JPEG, TIFF, BITMAP, or PSD (PhotoShop) file will create a fuzzier, less defined image. It also means that the resolution (dpi or ppi) of your file is critical. Bitmaps and grayscale files must be at least 1200 dpi at 100% of final size. We redraw black & white raster art and turn it into vector art for most applications. The best application for color raster art is photo-type images that do not need retouching. These types of color files should be at least 300 dpi at 100% of final size.
Camera Ready Art:
This is black & white line art and has very clean, crisp lines. It is scanned into our system and reproduced, turning it into digital art. The larger your art the better the scan. Send your art at 200% of the final size if you can, and at the highest resolution possible (600 dpi or greater) to make the finest quality imprint. Please, NO HALFTONES, SCREENS or SHADES OF GRAY. Usable as art in many cases: letterhead, business cards, printed pieces on flat, smooth surfaces. Not usable as art: faxes, copies of faxes and products with curved or rough surfaces.
Layout:
ALWAYS provide a layout and a hard copy of your art so we will know how you want your imprint to look. Provide a color composite of multi-color images when sending in camera-ready art, or just send it in color, digitally (VECTOR ART preferred, FONTS outlined).
Uploading Artwork Through the Website:
When uploading an image through the checkout process, the maximum allowed size is 50Kb. If your artwork exceeds 50Kb, you can email your artwork to artwork@buybluesky.com.
