EMERGENY QUESTIONS, THE SEQUEL!

Hi, gang. Just heard from this person I'm working with on a t-shirt design. She heard back from the printers who told her the files she uploaded that I sent to her were not "good enough quality". She says she thinks that something is going wrong with my sending the files to her in one format (done on one program) and then her trying to convert the color etc. in AI (Adobe Illustrator).

What I did was export the art (that I rendered in Xara and PS4) to her as an AI file, because she works in Adobe Illustrator (which I don't have). She converted the RBG colors to CMYK using AI and the result looked pretty good IMO, better than they did when I converted them using Xara, but the printer seems to have an issue anyway. She suggests that I upload the files directly to the printers from my end, but I don't see how that would improve the situation. And anyway, I tried converting the RGB colors to CMYK using Xara and they didn't look too good. Her conversion using AI looked much better. BUT she says she can't alter the file I sent to her in AI. Which I don't understand because the file I sent her was in AI format. Yet she can't alter it on her end using AI.


Is this making any sense?

Suggestions would be most welcome. And thanks!

Since nobody else has got back to you..

When the printer is unhappy with the quality, I suspect they actually mean the resolution of the image. They expect 300DPI, so for a ten-inch t-shirt design the width would be 3000 pixels. Check the size of the graphic image that was sent.

The export to AI is probably flattened as a bitmap so it will be uneditable. It's like loading a jpg into a Xara file - it will be a single thing.

Check the export options for ai - particularly the DPI and output document size.

Hope that helps.

Paul

If you create a PDF/X file, the colors will automatically convert to CMYK. If you have vector objects they will be resolution independent, which means they will scale to whatever resolution the printer wants them to be. If you have bitmaps, then they probably need to be 300dpi. But still, PDF/X is your best export option.

PDF is also the native file format for Illustrator so the person you are working with should be able to bring them into Illustrator with no problems.

Thanks so much, Paul and GW!

So I did check the file for the t-shirt design, and sure enough, it is less than 3000 pixels (but not by much). That probably happened when I was trying to get the files via email to my partner - I had to reduce them to get them to send. So I've resized the tee design using PS4 with no problems. But when I try to resize another design for our project - this design is for a hat - something weird happens. The file is pretty big, and I'm trying to reduce it to 3.5"x2.5". But PS4 isn't cooperating. So I'd like to try to resize that one using Xara. Can you tell me how to do that? After resizing the 2 designs, I'm going to try to get them to my partner using PDF/X per GW's suggestion and Drop Box. Thanks again, guys, for your advice!

You could also try WETRANSFER ... you can email up to 2GB free. I personally find it much more user friendly than dropbox for one shot email type transfers, rather than permanent storage.

when I deal with printers [not that often these days, as with HTML I have farmed it out to others ] they prefer PDF/X as gary said - when dealing with bitmaps the important thing is pixel size - you need to think of the maximum print size- say 3.5 inches and then multiply that by the minimum resolution the printer will accept, usually 300 dpi and then as long as the exported bitmap measures 3.5 x 300 ie 1050 pixels minimum, it does not matter what PS4 or any other program thinks the notional print size is, because at that stage it is not being printed - the printer will sort that out as long as it is at least that minimum pixel size

to export a vector design from xara at 300dpi you need to [re]size your design to the maximum print size - lets say 3.5 inches again, and then when you export the bitmap, in the export dialog change the bitmap resolution from 96 to 300 dpi and you should see that the bitmap will export at 1050 pixels - if you import any bitmaps into the design they will need to be at least 300 dpi so as not to be degraded during the export
[EDIT - if you want to create such a bitmap within xara, then do the same thing but using the bitmap copy function rather than export]

2ND EDIT - there again if you are exporting as PDF/X all you need do is make sure that the vector design is at least your maximum print size and that any bitmaps then included at that size are [still] at least 300dp - you can check the dpi of the bitmap so positioned by selecting it and looking at the status bar

and of course, if it is pure vector you don't need to worry about sizing at all, the beauty of vector.... but you would still need to check it visually on screen across the print size range of course ;)

@KEITH - WETRANSFER looks interesting, thanks for that :)

@PAUL - for once some of us were in bed the same day we got up :D