Do Not Know the Correct Specs for Printing Via a Service Bureau

[dwsmith98]

Have designed a brochure data sheet for a client using CorelXara. Unfortunately, live in a small town with only a handful of service bureaus that are primarily QuarkXpress/Illustrator/Photoshop shops. Have generated just about every file type in existence but nothing that is compatible with their prepress operations. Have tried Acrobat Distiller/PDF, but we go round-and-round reconfiguring Xara specs. Meanwhile I'm delaying my client's print schedule. Does anyone know of a: 1) service bureau that speaks Xara, or 2) a company or individual that can transform my native Xara file into a suitable print-worthy format for printing (for a $fee), or 3) any xara print experts in the Greater Washington DC area, or 4) of a detailed service bureau specification for Xara? I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what the heck I'm doing regarding professional printing.

[dwsmith98]

Have designed a brochure data sheet for a client using CorelXara. Unfortunately, live in a small town with only a handful of service bureaus that are primarily QuarkXpress/Illustrator/Photoshop shops. Have generated just about every file type in existence but nothing that is compatible with their prepress operations. Have tried Acrobat Distiller/PDF, but we go round-and-round reconfiguring Xara specs. Meanwhile I'm delaying my client's print schedule. Does anyone know of a: 1) service bureau that speaks Xara, or 2) a company or individual that can transform my native Xara file into a suitable print-worthy format for printing (for a $fee), or 3) any xara print experts in the Greater Washington DC area, or 4) of a detailed service bureau specification for Xara? I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what the heck I'm doing regarding professional printing.

[Luciano]

We have brochures printed for my company every month, at first it was difficult to get them printed right, now it has become a much easier task.
The print bureau imports the files that we saved on a zip disk in quark Xpress (obviously on a Mac).

The simplest file format I suggest is Tiff at 300dpi, resulting colours resemble the ones that you see when "show printer colours" option is enabled.

Now I prefer xara eps format (NOT illustrator eps) with bitmaps resolution set at 300dpi.
I advice you to follow the path I suggested in another post and disable "show printer colours" before exporting to Xara eps, because you could incur in some postscript errors.

I hope it will help you.
Luciano

p.s. check the eps file with ghostview, before leaving it to the bureau.

p.s.bis If you send me a small part of your brochure I can send you eps file to test with your bureau.

[This message was edited by Luciano on March 14, 2001 at 11:42 AM.]

[gwpriester]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> p.s. check the eps file with ghostview, before leaving it to the bureau. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Luciano


What is ghostview and where can I find it?

(Not everybody knows what it is, you know) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Every So Humble...

[Luciano]

GSview is a freeware utility which works with ghostscript.
First you need installing Ghostscript which is an interpreter for the PostScript language and then you can install Gsview which is a sort of graphical interface, since ghostscript is based on command lines.

In view menu, set alpha-text and alpha-graphics to 4 bit/pixel.

You can find these great utilities at:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

[Sean Sedwards]

DW (?)

You may be interested in a thread I've started in the X forum about exporting CMYK TIFs.

Regards - Sean

[rsallen]

Do you have a Kinko's nearby? If so, you can download their software and produce an output file directly from Xara (Distills it kind of like a PDF file) to create a file in Kinko's Document format. (*.kdf) Take it or send it directly to the Kinko's nearest you and they can process it. You can do all of this online too. I have used this with great success on small projects. I had outstanding results. I believe the file provides some kind of viewing compression, but retains 1200dpi printing information. Anyway, it has worked out well for me.!!! Hope this helps. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

"Wherever you go, there you are."

Randy Allen