Searching for Xara friendly printing company in U.S.A.

**Egg Bramhill** · 01 October 2006, 04:39 AM

MG,

JPG is a lossy file type. This means it uses a compression algorithm to reduce the file size. One of the problems with this compression technique is solid areas of colur tend to get "fuzzy" artifacts.

.ai, .xar, .swf and .pdf file formats can keep image data as vectors, not bitmap. They can therefore be scaled without loss of resolution/detail.

**Arlen_Albert** · 01 October 2006, 06:09 PM

Why on earth everybody forgets about the magic TIFF raster file format? It can store CMYK (the true printing color separation) color spaces. It can contain compressed raster image. It was specially developped for printing needs! Why you stuck on the JPEG file format for printing usage?

**Big Frank** · 01 October 2006, 06:20 PM

Because he asked about JPEGs, that's why. If I was going to submit an image file to a printer I too would send him a TIFF without a doubt.

**mg.architect** · 02 October 2006, 02:26 AM

Sheesh...let's start over. Does anyone know of a Xara compatible printing company in the USA?

Why are custom business cards so darn difficult? All I want is my design printed in black on glossy stock. It consists of an image and some text, and I don't want the image size to change nor do I want the text size to change. Take a picture and print it. How hard is that?

I can plot out drawings for multi-million dollar projects but have to jump through hoops for a simple $80 dollar business card order. Something is screwed up with that.

This seems to be fast approaching an exercise in futility.

mg

**Big Frank** · 02 October 2006, 08:45 AM

I already said VistaPrint. If that doesn't work for you, sorry. It worked for me.

**mg.architect** · 02 October 2006, 09:30 AM

I've got a call in to them BF. They're supposed to call me back Monday AM.
My only concern with them is I'm back into the unknown "exporting graphics trial and error" world again, and I don't want a screwed up product.

It does seem like such an unnecessary hassle for such a relatively simple item.

I was hoping that out there somewhere I could locate a printing company that said "Xara files? Sure, no problem".

mg

**Big Frank** · 02 October 2006, 12:42 PM

Originally Posted by mg.architect

I was hoping that out there somewhere I could locate a printing company that said "Xara files? Sure, no problem".

Not on this earth. Maybe in another dimension somewhere...

Anyway, that still leaves you with the problem of embedded fonts, unless you remeber to convert them to shape in which case you cannot edit them later. That's why I convert to high-res raster for business cards because not even your average printer can cock that up.

**mg.architect** · 02 October 2006, 02:44 PM

I viewed the jpg in photoshop this am and ugh...the white text shape on the black background has the "jaggies" :-(

So I tried the tiff export...same thing, more "jaggies" :-(

PDF export...transparency messes up.

So this isn't acceptable for printing.

What next?

mg

**Big Frank** · 02 October 2006, 02:54 PM

Post the *.xar file and let's see what you're doing. Maybe the solution is simple and just something you have overlooked. I bet you haven't upped the resolution on export.

**amoore** · 02 October 2006, 03:06 PM

What resolution did you use? For clean lines in a tiff, use 300dpi. You can also try a 300dpi jpg at 100% quality, but that's still jpg, so you may not get a sharp line edge even then.

Another thing to consider is that what you see on screen may not be what you print. Letters and lines in high res bitmaps often look jaggy on screen but print beautifully. 96dpi bitmaps may look better on screen (depending on the app displaying it), but they don't print well. Have you tried printing the page to see how it comes out?

You can also try saving your xar file to a new name once you have it the way you want it, then making a high-res tiff of the card and duplicating that as needed to fill out the page. That should export as a pdf because there's no transparency.

Or create a high-res, non-transparent bitmap of the parts with transparency, convert the text to curves and export to pdf. That would elso elimiinate the transparency issue for pdf. (Xara's pdf filter has a checkbox for converting text to curves as part of the export. That can save you a step.)

As long as you keep an editable original of your file, you can always update it or try something else later.