Most images. The process is similar to printing a digital photograph, ( for banners and flags ) but on a much larger scale. Fine detail is usually preserved very well, but this is also a function of the media ( i.e. the type of fabric ) and scaling issues ( see below ).
Almost. Your screen represents colours as mixtures of Red,Green, and Blue ( RGB ). The printer uses Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black ( CMYK ) to make it's colours. For nearly all colours, a pretty much exact match can be achieved. It's not normally a problem. For more information about 'colour spaces' ( and many other relevant issues ), see here for example.
As the process is not a screen printing process, and if you specify particular Pantone ( 'spot' ) colours we then match these to a CMYK colour.
We can accept individual emails up to about 30Mb. ( Please use zen81837@zen.co.uk for this size). You will need to ensure that your Internet provider allows you to send emails this large. You could to use a tool such as Split to cut the file into smaller segments, or WinZip will reduce the size. Of course, you can always send us a CD in the post. We could also download from an FTP site if you have one.
We use Adobe Illustrator ( up to CS ) and Corel Draw ( up to version X3) as our main graphics tools. We prefer artwork in .ai or .cdr format. We can use EPS ( Encapsulated PostScript ). For pure bitmaps, we prefer TIFF. We can also usually deal with other formats such as PDF, PS or PSD.
The main problem we see with artwork is SCALE.
It requires some care to create an image file which can be scaled up to a required size without significant loss of quality. We prefer to use Vector graphics, as opposed to Bitmapped graphics. Vector scales perfectly. Bitmapped graphics do not.
Very often, a piece of artwork that has been produced in AI or Corel actually contains a mixture of vector and bitmapped graphics. For example, you may have scanned something and placed it in the graphic, or you may have used a bitmapped photograph. If this is the case, the bitmaps should be created at the required finished size, with a resolution of at least 300dpi.
Please note that JPEG files are bitmaps. Infact, they're 'lossy-compressed' bitmaps, which makes the quality/scaling situation worse. Because of the way JPEG works, pictures with sharp edges in ( like logos or text ) are particularly bad for this. Photos of 'natural' scenes usually come out much better.
We can generally do something with JPEG's that have high resolution, and low compression. Converting a low quality JPEG into a different format does not improve the quality. In some circumstances we may need to recreate the image from scratch to achieve adequate quality, and this will incur an artwork charge, to be agreed before we go ahead and do this.
The exception to this could be if it is supplied full size on a CD, and was created full size with at least 300dpi, or a high quality digital photograph.
Scans produce bitmaps. If you are sending us a scan of something that you want us to put on a banner, please scan it at at least 300dpi when at full size. Our preferred format for Bitmap images such as this is TIFF.
Please be aware that if you are scanning something very small ( e.g. a letterhead ), it will not be possible to scale it up to banner size without substantial loss of quality no matter what resolution you scan it at. In this case we may need to recreate the image from scratch to achieve adequate quality, and this will incur an artwork charge.
If you only require text, just let us know the font, or supply it to us as a truetype font, as this will suffice. (see further on under Fonts).
Web graphics are very often not suitable for reproduction at large scales. They are usually bitmaps which have been optimised to be as small as possible, which generally means as low a quality as possible whilst still looking OK on a computer screen.
If you supply us with such a graphic, we would probably need to recreate the image from scratch to achieve adequate quality, and this will incur an artwork charge.
If you need an exact font match, and you supply an image file in which the text/font has been 'converted to curves/paths, the font is not an issue.
Otherwise, either we would already have the required font ( and we have thousands, so there's a fair chance ), or you will need to supply us with the font. If your font is a TrueType font, you can do this by just sending us the relevant .TTF file from your Windows 'Fonts' folder.
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