American Litho File Prep Standards.pdf

American Lithography File Preparation Standards American Litho uses a PDF workflow, therefor we prefer PDF files distilled using press-quality settings.

We will accept native files as long as all links, fonts (Please outline fonts where applicable) and the original program files are supplied. Keep file names short (no more than 17 characters long), to reduce linking issues, as our systems cannot copy files with names longer than 17 characters.

American Litho has an ftp site which can be accessed by using the “Contact/FTP” tab on our website, www.amerlitho.com, and clicking on the “Sending Files to American Litho” link.. Here you will be required to fill out information, in full, about your publication before you will be allowed to upload your files.

As long as files do not exceed 20MB, you can e-mail us files as well. Usually e-mail will only handle about 20MB of info, but that also depends on your service provider. Our e-mail address is:

prepress@amerlitho.com. Please specify in the subject line the title of the job so it is easily recognizable.

Please do not label jobs, for example, as Fall2006.pdf. We have many customers sending us files and it can become difficult to keep files from overwriting or being distinquished from other jobs.

CD’s or DVD’s are a safe way of bypassing the corruption of files which sometimes occurs when transferring files via the internet. They are also a good back up plan. Please provide a printed out hardcopy proof of your project for our reference, as well.

Dimensions for cover pages are as follows; Margins on all sides of the page should be set up for .375”. Don’t let the type fall outside of the margins; otherwise type gets too close to the trim edge, and can be clipped off during the printing process. We ask that a .25” bleed be used for all sides of the page. Margins and bleeds should remain consistent for all pages in the document. We need .375” symmetrical margins and a symmetrical .25” bleed on all sides of the document. If you have questions about different publication sizes, you can always call ahead of time and ask for Jason, Ted, or Brian in prepress. You are welcome to send us an e-mail, as well.

Please make sure that everything is saved in CMYK, not RGB. If you have a spot color, be certain that it is saved as a Pantone color. When selecting black for any components please do not use Registration Black, as it is not an actual color and will show up as a CMYK blend, which will require editing before it can be printed properly.

Please make sure anything that is supposed to be in black is either saved in grayscale or as 100% Black from your color palette.

We do not accept PowerPoint applications for print and require graphics to be saved in .pdf, .eps, .tif or .jpeg format. Anything that should print in black and white should be saved as grayscale. Please try to stay clear of using the measurements palette to bold, underline or italicize (i.e. selecting the Helvetica font and using the measurements palette to bold. Select an actual font that has bold, italic, etc. in the name) because our system will generate errors if proper fonts cannot be linked to. Images or graphics should not be any resolution lower than 300 ppi! Anything less than 300 ppi can result in distortion and blurring of images and text.

Files submitted should not have page information such as crop marks, registration marks, bleed marks, etc. Our system will put these marks on as needed. If they are added to your file, we will have to edit them out.

Upon receiving proofs, please mark clearly on them with a red pen to indicate what needs to be corrected, and check the appropriate box on the attached Digital proof slip along with a signature and date. If editable files were supplied, corrections can be made by our prepress techs. Otherwise, new pages must be supplied by the customer upon request.

If I have not answered all your questions, or you have others that have presented themselves, feel free to contact either Jason, Ted, or Brian in prepress and someone will be able to help you.

Thank you.

American Litho Prepress Department