“Getting The Results You Want Starts With You!”

We know alot of tricks to make your work come out looking its best. But we can't always fix everything, and fixing snags can cost you time and money! Here are some helpful hints to follow to make sure your job goes smoothly.

Don’t set your work all of the way to the edge of the paper, try to give yourself at least 1/4” of blank space all of the way around your page.

Double check where your fold will be, a lot of the programs give a margin all the way around an 8.5 x 11 and don’t take into consideration the same amount of margin space for the center panel. A good way to check is print out a sample and do a sample fold. This will tell you right away if you are lined up correctly!

Why did my pictures print out so blurry? They looked fine on my computer screen! Do not use images from the internet in your layouts! Pictures from the web look great on your 72dpi computer screen, but will appear blurry and pixellated when printed on our digital copiers and presses which sometimes require a resolution of 1200dpi or more. Photos need to be scanned in at least 300dpi and digital camera images need to be above 2 megapixels to ensure clear and crisp image quality.

PDF is your friend! When laying out your own printed piece, you will want to save it in PDF format. This is the most trouble-free format for printers to work with, as some formats require that you also send the fonts and pictures you used in order to achieve a quality print. If you are unsure how to make your document a PDF, check out this handy little tool.

The most efficient size of post card is a 4.25” x 5.5” . Don’t try to put your text right at the edge of the card, try to use at least a 1/4” margin. When setting up your card put 4 up of the front of your card on an 8.5” x 11” page. Create another 8.5” x 11” page and put 4 up of the back of your card. This set up will save you money.

Copies of copies!?! We always want your work to look professional, so when bringing in copy work make sure you bring in your originals. If you bring in a copy of the original and we make copies from that their will be some degeneration of your output. This gets to be quite noticeable if it is a 4th or 5th generation copy that you want re-copied.

Double sided from ink jet? If you print out your originals on an ink jet printer and you want your output to be double sided, just print it out single sided and we can make it double sided for you. We suggest this because ink jets tend to bleed through to the other side of your sheet and our copiers are sensitive enough to pick that up and it will look like smudge marks on your copies.

Wanting a copy off of a color sheet of paper? Sometimes that is not the best way to get results. Copy machines have a hard time reading off of darker color papers, red in particular. We know sometimes that is the only original you have and we will always go the extra mile to give you a quality copy.

Do you have to do a program booklet? Our machines have the ability of taking your 8.5” x11” print-out and setting it up for an 11” x 17” booklet (when folded in 1/2 the size is 8.5” x 11”), or an 8.5” x 11” booklet (when folded in 1/2 the size is 8.5” x 5.5”). This means if you don’t have access to a computer program that sets up a booklet for you, our machine can do it for you! Just think, no more messy paste-ups! Also keep in mind the when you do a booklet you have 4 panels to work with, so think in page quantities of 4’s ( 4, 8, 12, 16 etc.). If you have questions on this please feel free to give us a call and we’ll be happy to walk you through the process!

Non-repro blue? This color of blue (light blue) is intended to use to mark your page without the copier seeing it. Keep in mind when your are printing out from the internet and they give you a web-site address, it will print out in a light blue ink. When you bring that in to be copied the machine thinks it is not supposed to print that, so before you print out your page go in and change the color of that address to black. This will assure you will have a quality copy.

Hi-liters - If you have used a hi-liter to mark up pages and you want copies, our black and white machines will not pick that up. If you do need it to show use our digital color machine and your copies will retain your hi-liter marks.