Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 7 Business Card Imagesetting issues

[Jamestown]

Hey I'm designing some buisness cards using Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 7 and I'm looking for the "Imagesetting" tab to show the crop marks on my PDF. I've been reading tutorials but most of them are from 2001-2006 and are showing options I don't see in XPG7.

all the tutorials say go to
File> Print Options > Imagesetting tab

This even shows in the Help Menu Tutorial:


But the Imagesetting tab does not show when I open the tab. This is all that shows:


Output and Print Layout

Why is it not showing "Imagesetting and Separations"? Anyone have a solution to this? Or an alternative to printing a PDF with the crop marks and other printing marks?

[handrawn]

you need the pro version for the imagesetting tab, sorry

[angelize]

Here is a template I created for business cards it is a 10up layout set up on a US letter size page. (it may need some adjustments if you are using a4 size paper to print) you should be able to use the guidelines to place your crop marks manually.

blank business cards.xar

[Albacore]

Before you start to make a biz card you have to decide on a few things: Will it have any RGB images in it, will have full or partial colour bleed, what sort of press that it will be printed on. All of these things will have an effect on your design. If you live in Europe small print shops as you see in many high streets will use a page size of SRA 3 where in the North Americas they use A3+. If it is for a very large run you will need to select a larger printer and they use larger page size. You can just supply one Biz card and they do the setup for you but of course you have to pay for this service. All of the above will effect your choices so go and find a printer and talk to them about your design and ask them there preferred bleed size.

I have very quickly prepared an A4 sheet with a design with the lefthand one for full bleed and the right with no bleed off. They were all done in soft groupings which I would recommend that you do as when you export your design as a PDF you will want the text in the top most layer or as in this design above the background. Also in the lefthand I have shown the bleed as a pink line rectangle which you must remember to hide when exporting as this is just a guide. Both sides were just copied by Ctrl+drag+righthand mouse click. If you are working on a larger sheet of paper for the printer find out what size they are using and in Page options make that size and save it as a template then import your Biz card in with cut lines and then distribute your design throughout that page so that you get the most in. This can be done by Ctrl +R/hand clicking or fill the top half page by right clicking and then using Blend Tool to fill the whole page.

[longlivemedia]

Advanced graphics design concepts really elude me, but one thing I can suggest is that If you can't solve your immediate problem, maybe you can work around it. One day you might find someone who can teach you how to fix those crop marks and other things, but for now you have the options of making do with what you know and can do.

[csehz]

Sorry I am a newbie in this topic, basically so to print a business card by a company, a .pdf document is used by the graphic program? Somehow I thought that probably it is a .png file

[mwenz]

Most North American and Western European countries use PDF for professional printing. Your area printers might desire another format.

A friend in India needs to send the printers in his area EPS files with all type converted to curves. Another friend in Africa sends his printers TIFF files as that is what they desire.

So check with the printers you would be using and ask what types of files they desire to work with.

Take care, Mike

[csehz]

Mike thanks, I was thinking slightly to ask this but happy that finally asked

So briefly probably are used around also the different kind of picture file formats, but so can be also .pdf. Good to know, because at first sight would think maybe that oh that is only for text documents

[Gamerprinter]

I create and print business cards all the time. Usually I create one business card at 3.5 inches wide by 2 inches tall as a single design. Once the design is done, I create a letter size new page with Show Grid andSnap to Grid on. I cut and paste the single business card, then clone and move the card to one side to have two cards up, side by side perfectly lined up. Then I clone and drop the cloned pair beneath the first two cards. I continue doing this until all 10 cards are created. Then I select all, cut and paste all 10 cards so they are centered on the page. Then I print to my color laser. I have a one letter size sheet at a time business card cutter in house. This is my entire business card production process. It's pretty easy, really.