Specification · revision 6 · issued 01 Jul 2026
Supply PDF/X-4. One file per job, pages in reading order, single pages rather than spreads. Every number on this page is a tolerance the preflight report measures against, so a file that meets it will pass without a phone call.
The trim box is the finished size. Bleed is 3mm outside it on all four edges, so an A5 page is supplied at 154 × 216mm with the trim box set to 148 × 210mm. Any image or panel of colour that reaches the edge of the page must run the full 3mm out.
The safety margin is 4mm inside the trim. Folios, captions, rules and anything else that must not be cut sit inside it. A guillotine holds to ±0.5mm on a good lift and ±1mm across a full run, and a saddle-stitched section moves more than a flat sheet.
Do not supply crop marks inside the bleed box. We add marks at imposition.
300ppi effective at final placed size. Effective, not native: a 300ppi image scaled to 200% is 150ppi on the sheet and will show. Line art and scanned type want 1200ppi bitmap. Anything under 300ppi is a warning, not a failure — it prints, it just prints soft, and the warning goes on the proof so nobody is surprised.
CMYK only. RGB and Lab objects are a failure, not a conversion request — we will not guess at an intent for you. Convert with ISO Coated v2 (ECI) for coated stock and PSO Uncoated v3 (FOGRA52) for uncoated.
Total area coverage is capped at 300% on coated stock and 260% on uncoated. A four-colour black built at 60/50/50/100 comes to 260% and holds everywhere. Small black type is 100% K only.
Name your spots. An unnamed separation called “Colour 1” is a warning because we cannot tell whether it is a fifth ink or a mistake.
Every font embedded, subset or full. Unembedded fonts are a failure: the RIP substitutes and the line breaks move. Outlining type is acceptable but not preferred — it costs us the ability to fix a typo without a resupply, and hairline strokes below 0.25pt will not hold once outlined.
Booklet page counts are multiples of four because a signature is folded from a sheet printed both sides. 24pp is three 8pp sections or one 16pp plus one 8pp. Supply blank pages as blank pages; do not leave them out and expect us to count.
studio_job_size_version.pdf, lower case, underscores, no spaces and no accents. Put the version in the name and increment it — nine-dots_catalogue_48pp_v4.pdf is a filename we can act on, final_FINAL.pdf is not.
PDF/X-4 is PDF 1.6 with live transparency, ICC-managed colour and a declared output intent. It is the only format we accept because it is the only one that tells us what you meant by “black”.
InDesign
Illustrator
Every upload is measured against these twelve tolerances. Failures stop the job at preflight until prepress overrides them with a written reason. Warnings do not stop anything, but they are printed on the proof sheet.
| Check | Tolerance |
|---|
Keep this beside the export dialog. It is the whole specification in nine lines.
Print at 100% on A4. Questions on a specific file go to prepress with the job reference.
Ready to price something? The instant quote gives the press, the sheet count and the despatch date.