CMYK print files your printshop can print as they are.
Every order’s print is a print-ready CMYK PDF, made for the machine it prints on. The same on every plan, from the first order on Free.
Every plan
CMYK, with the right profile
A design is drawn in RGB and converted to CMYK as its print is made. Pixonaut converts with ISO Coated v2 (FOGRA39) or GRACoL 2013, or with the ICC profile your printshop’s machine prints with.
- Upload your printshop’s own ICC profile to a machine profile
- Every print file for that machine is converted with it
- Spot inks print as plates of their own where the machine takes them
Ready for the press
Each print is a PDF with its page boxes set, sized from the product in millimetres, never from a screen.
- 3 mm bleed by default, narrowed where a machine needs less
- Crop marks, and registration marks for Summa OPOS and Roland cutters
- Mirrored output for transfers
- A warning when a picture prints below your minimum resolution, 150 dpi unless you set another
Layers and editable text
A print PDF is flat unless you choose otherwise: every layer drawn into one picture, every letter a shape. Choose another form for the workspace, a connected store or a template, and a print’s other forms can be asked for on its page, where one that cannot be made is refused, with the reason.
- Layers: each printed layer is named in the PDF, so a background or a white underbase can be switched off in Acrobat or Illustrator
- Live text: plain text stays live as well, to select, search and correct, short of the cases below
What to expect of them
Each layered file is checked against the flat one before it is handed out. Unedited, it prints exactly as the flat one; live text prints the same outside text, and within a tolerance you set at text edges. A new print that fails the check is made in a simpler form, and says why.
- Text with a gradient, outline, shadow or curve stays as shapes, as does text inside a repeat, or in a font with PostScript outlines or a licence that forbids embedding. The docs list every case
- Checked through Ghostscript, not any particular printshop’s RIP: try a file at your printshop first
- Once a file has been edited, nothing is guaranteed
One machine, one profile
A machine profile keeps what a file printed on one of your printshop’s machines is handed out with: its colour profile, marks, bleed, the cut line’s name, and which files it takes, as the PDF or, for a machine that reads pictures, a PNG or TIFF of it. A job that needs other settings once asks for one-off settings instead of a new profile.