51 Green Printing Tips

Tip #12 - How To Prepare Files For Your Next Green Digital Run

Digital printing has increased my Green printing sales. Most of our clients are smaller green entrepreneurs, and many are brand new to printing in general. I get a lot of questions from these young entrepreneurs, who want to do the environmentally correct print job, but struggle with preparing the files for us. This is also a good review for the seasoned designer.

When preparing your files, that have solid pantone colors in the graphics, do "not" convert your files to CMYK. Most designers that know digital is printed in CMYK or RGB, think they need to convert the files to what they think we need.

But, we prefer you don't do that. Our pre press equipment will automatically convert your files to what we need. We prefer to see your pantone color(s), and we then have your colors as a guide, as we do the conversion ourselves.

Sometimes, our equipment might convert to RGB, and sometimes your digital pictures will be printed as RGB automatically. You wouldn't be able to foresee that we prefer that option.

We want to make being Green easy for you. We will do the extra work.

The same holds true on printing our 100% PCW or Tree Free business cards. Just give us 1 up files. Don't impose them for us. The imposition is automatic.

The only thing that can hold you up is forgetting to add 1/8" bleed when the ink goes to the edge of the sheet. And, don't put your copy closer than 1/4" from the edge. Remember - digital printing needs a little margin.