How do others perpare files for email...

[graphicgirl]

I am working on full page, full color adds for our clients for magagzines. The magazines usually ask for either the files to be sent to them on a CD or Via Email - since time is short usually, email is the only option, but as most will know, these files are huge! I ordered Acrobat (One magazine required acrobat format) and ran the "Distiller" on one of the files, it condensed it great, but when I printed it out, there was lines in the text, sorta like it had been smeared, but it was the file. Does anyone have any suggestions how I may be able to get acrobat to work for me? Or how others do this, I know about FTP, but alot of our contacts aren't using that as an option yet. Thanks

 

[jimoblak]

If you are up against a timeline, it is better to burn a CD and send by next day mail RIGHT NOW than to try to wrestle with image compression for email delivery for the first time. You can send the CD and then continue to try the email option.

Try zipping (PC) or stuffing (Mac) your files to reduce file size. Also try saving the bitmap images to TIFF with LZW compression. LZW compression is lossless (it maintains the image perfectly).

Keep in mind that the sender (you) and the recipient (the magazines) may have file size limits on email accounts. Some folks limit their attachments to 2 Mb.

When a printer offers to accept art by email and does not offer FTP, they are probably not too skilled with handling electronically transferred files. They may be intending to receive smaller vector-based files, not full page raster images.

 

[BDNFLNC]

Clients can FTP right through a browser though. All you need to do is send them the address. Instead of http:// they use ftp://.

They can get the files right from Internet Explorer.

 

[jimoblak]

I overlooked some of your question about Acrobat:

Does the 'smearing' appear on screen, or just in print?

For the best PDF output for a magazine publisher, select 'Press' in the 'Job Options' of Distiller.

What program are your designing in? We are in a Photoshop forum but you seem to be originating your work in another program (since Photoshop can save as PDF without the need of Distiller).

The lines in the text may also be a bad font or unsupported styles applied to the font. Acrobat can be very discerning with faulty or rights-protected fonts.

 

[graphicgirl]

I am designing in Photoshop 7.0 - the fonts were just a regular Arial, and the reason I used the distiller, was it seemed to condense it alot more than just saving it as a .PDF format.

The background was black, and the type was white, there was just a slight streak of gray through a couple of the lines near the bottom of the page - I checked the file, it was in the file as well, so I don't think it was a printer problem. But in the file that I just saved out of Photoshop as a .PDF did fine, it just wasn't condensed enough - but, it doesn't seem that there is a really good way to do this short of Burning a CD.