Production specs

With the myriad of computer programs and file formats in use today across the design industry, it is easy to get confused about which files are appropriate to send to any organisation. At Breakthrough, we all use PC computers and professionally recognised applications such as Microsoft Office, QuarkXpress 4.0, Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Freehand 7.0, Adobe Acrobat 4.0 and Corel Draw 8.0. As a result, we accept the following file formats for use in our artwork:

Text

Text may be supplied digitially via email or as Microsoft Word (.doc) or Microsoft Excel (.xls) documents. If neither of these formats are appropriate, files from any Word processor application may be saved/exported as either text files (.txt) or as rich text files (.rtf). Documents from Microsoft Works (.wtf) are not acceptable.

Pre-formatted artwork

QuarkXpress files – all such files must be accompanied by any linked images and all fonts in use. Unfortunately, Apple Mac uses non-compatible fonts so Quark files from these machines are probably best sent in another format such as TIFF (.TIF) files or as Acrobat documents (.PDF) (see below);

Freehand files – Both Freehand (.FH7) and encapsulated postscript files (.EPS) are usable on our systems. Unfortunately, we cannot read files from Freehand 8.0 or greater. EPS files must have text converted to curves;

Adobe Acrobat files – Acrobat files (.PDF) are great for supplying either text or images but it is important to remember that all fonts must be embedded otherwise we might not be able to read them properly; and

Corel Draw files – while we do not use Corel often anymore (favouring other formats instead) we can accept files from Corel applications (.CDR) older than or equal to Corel Draw 8.0. Encapsulated postscript files (.EPS) are acceptable as long as all text is converted to curves or all fonts are supplied.

Images

While there are a number of image formats around, some of these vary in quality with compression techniques to make the files smaller for email (such as JPEG files). As a result, we have to be careful with the types of images we accept. Below is a list of the best files to use:

Photoshop documents (.PSD)

Encapsulated postscript files (.EPS)

Tagged images files or TIFF files (.TIF)

Acrobat Reader documents (.PDF)

JPEG (.JPG) files from Hi-res Digital Cameras only

For the most part, JPEG (.JPG) files and Compuserve GIF files (.GIF) are of inferior quality and not considered suitable for our print artwork. It is important to remember that these images have already been corrupted by the compression process and will not be repaired by converting them to the file formats listed above.

All of the above files should be sent at a resolution of approximately 300dpi at 100% size.