Printing Spain There are many printers and printing companies such as
cheap-printing-spain.com who cater for international customers. With English-speaking printers in Spain it is easier to be sure of obtaining the most cost-effective printing as nothing is lost in translation. Nowadays, it is more important than ever to be on the hunt for great value in your printing.
Printers Spain is no exception. On the contrary, the opportunity to buy bargain-priced printing is greater with targeted and healthily populated expatriate regions. With printers who cater for specific populations, it is more economical to fill printing plates with many customers requiring similar print runs to really reduce the initial setup costs. It is normal that these savings are then passed on to the client. For example, a printing supplier in Alicante on the run up to St. Patrick's Day would have one or two printing plates all filled with A5 flyers advertising several different venues or events. So for the cost of one printing plate, the printer can produce several jobs. This then can force the price of printing down to accommodate the requirement.
Quality Printing
It is often confused that poor printed output is down to the printer. Sometimes this is the case with issues such as colour registration or of course, lack of quality control, but mostly it is down to the resolution and colour levels of the original artwork. So it is vial to check your final print file before sending to the printing company. Here is a list of some of the most common techniques to bear in mind which if ignored or done incorrectly, result in a less than average printed output.
Crop areas
If you want your finished artwork to have the final size of A5, for example, and you wanted a part of your image to be printed right up to the paper (i.e not a white border) then the file that you should give to the printers should include crop marks defining the A5 image. It is therefore necessary to run the image beyond the crop marks so that a portion of the image is sliced of post press. Some printers will require different amounts but the industry standard is to supply a 3mm bleed.
Resolution
Image resolution is without doubt the number one offender when sending artwork in Spain. Lotes of due to problems in communication or lower-rate, lower profit margins, will simply print what is sent whether you have poor resolution or colour or not. So it's normally up to you make sure your files are printable to the highest quality possible. Printed resolution is something that can be very confusing, even to the most qualified and experienced industry professionals. Basically your great screen image doesn't necessarily mean it will look good on paper. Screen resolution on your monitor is 72 dots per inch and printed media at magazine quality is printed at 300 dpi. This is because colours are made up from four dots - cyan, magenta, yellow and black, whereas your monitor will display any single colour with only one screen pixel. If this is all a bit confusing, a good rule of thumb is to think that any screen image will print the same quality but a quarter of the size printed. In other words, if you have a nice big full screen image, it will print that same quality on paper but only a quarter of the size to retain that quality.
Balance, Colour Levels and compression
Another thing to check in your design files is the balance of levels. Remember screens are naturally bright. Photo editing software such as Photoshop will have functions such as auto levels which will automatically optimize the colours, or you can manually adjust them. There are lots of cheaper or free programs also available now that can also do similar things. Here's a quick popular example… if you had a picture of someone with the sky in the background, you'll sometimes notice that the face comes out a bit on the dark side because the camera didn't want to overexpose the sky when taking the photograph. But for the sake of your printing, it is probable that the subject is more important than the sky. Don't forget that this will show up to be worse on the printed image. Therefore, It's good practice to lift the levels of the photo to display the subject and overexpose the sky which will of course go white (i.e no ink on the paper). This is far less subtle on paper than an overexposed image on screen where the power of the backlight on the monitor can be a little bit over-compensatory.
Lastly, when photos are repeatedly saved and saved again, each time with a level of compression (such as a jpg) then compression tell-tale signs start to apper. Sometimes naked to the eye on screen, these can lower the quality and colour density of the printed image. If possible, find the original highest resolution image for use in your design.
Value for money with digital printing
Technology has moved a long way recently and it is now common place to find outlets for printing superb quality documents at very high resolutions in large, medium or very small quantities. Because of the fall in set up costs with the advent of quicker, better, printing equipment it is now possible to receive low-cost printing at high qualities. Cheap-printing-spain.com is one example of such a printer in Spain. They optimize through the use of latest technology and digital and offset printing to suit a client's particular needs. The result is great value for marketing and advertising through printing. Now, more than ever, marketing budgets are incredibly tight and the need for value for money is essential.
Printing Spain