WIDFP? - Saving

Although I have researched file types that are good and not good to send off for commercial printing, I found the last software session that we had more useful than this so I have decided to use my notes that I made in this to make a section titled 'saving'. We were basically told the best ways to save a file before sending it off to print, and I know that once I actually come to actually sending something, I will feel a lot more confident in doing so knowing I have followed these simple tips. So from my notes I made in this session, I typed them out so that they sound more informative and match the tone of voice to the rest of the manual.


Saving

A quick way to gather everything together that has been used on a file in InDesign to save, you can use the ‘Package’ option. This gives a menu box which gives the opportunity to do one last check over the whole file to ensure that everything is correct, such as having all the images saved as CMYK and at 300dpi, as well as whether any unnecessary spot colours have been used and so on. Once all this has been checked, the next option is an instructions box to specify any requirements to the printer, such as if a specific pantone colour has been used but it is to be printed as a UV spot varnish instead, as well as the address and contact details.

By using this option, it means that every file that has been used within the document, including specific fonts and images, should be sent over to the printers. In order to send over any fonts that have been used that aren’t software standard, permission must be granted from the source before it can be sent.

A way around is this is to either convert all text that uses fonts that aren’t software standard to create outlines. That way the font file wouldn’t need to be sent. Another way would be to save the file as a PDF instead. This embeds all the information into one file and doesn’t need to be checked before sending. To make a PDF file, the whole document must be exported. Before this actually saves, there is a menu box – these are a lot similar to print options. The presets for this are very useful. The best option to select for print is the Press Quality preset as nothing should need to be changed then before clicking saving, and it will save the document to the best possible standard so that no quality will be lost once the printer comes to printing it.

Layout

I have decided to organise the layout of this page before I decide on any images as they wouldn't really be 100% needed, so I will see what space I do have after I get the information on to the page.

The information fits down one column nicely although the spacing is a little off. 

There's a lot of white space so I thought I would have a look through the Team photos to see if any would suit, the first one that I came to was a picture of the actual building and I figured, well this page is basically like the step just before sending to print, so the image would be nice to be of the place as if to say this is where it will go sort of thing. This is the image:

I then added this to the layout.

Trying to find a way for it to fit on the page without overpowering the images that will be on the previous page was a bit tricky as I had tried it across the whole bottom of the page and what not, then I cropped it down to this. I don't really think that this is working and seeing the image in context with the information it doesn't really work.

When I deleted the image off the page and was just left with the columns of copy, I quite liked how it looked so I just lined it up, and decided to name the section 'saving for print'. I quite like how very simple the page is, and think it works.The columns that are being used are really apparent, and like I said previously, this section doesn't necessarily need an image to support what I mean. I will leave this like it is for now and see if I still think it looks alright after I work on some more things.

Looking at the whole dps and seeing how it works, I think it does and looks rather uniform.