How To Design For Print Using Photoshop

When creating a photoshop file ready for print there are a few steps you need to follow. Here is our step-by-step guide to make your photoshop file ready for print.

1. Creating your document. Make sure that your canvas is set to the correct UK paper size. To view UK paper sizes click on the button below. Your colour mode setting is set to CYMK and your resolution is set to 300dpi.

2. It is now time to set up bleed. To set up bleed in Photoshop follow these steps. Go to image, canvas size, this window will pop up. From here add 6mm to both the width and height of your canvas. This is what your canvas should look like once you have added your bleed zone. The green area shows the bleed zone, anything in this area will be cut off during the finishing stages of the printing process.

3. Once you are happy you have set your canvas up correctly you can now add in your design making sure that coloured elements such as backgrounds extend across the page and that important element such as text or images are within 5 mm from the canvas edge.

4.Once you are happy with your design and that everything is within the safe zone of your canvas you can now save your photoshop file as a PDF. Go to file and print. Select adobe PDF, in the printer section, Then click on print settings, This window will pop up, in the default settings, make sure that you have chosen high quality print. Then scroll down to printing marks and Make sure that both crop marks and registration marks are both ticked from here then press print, and choose where to save your PDF.

You now have a PDF ready for print. Make sure to review your PDF before supplying us with the print ready file.

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