Designing Your Books

Our Indigo 5500

Our books are printed on an Indigo 5500 Digital Press which works with most page layout software.

We recommend that you design your books in our free Picpress software.

All books must be submitted for printing using our free Picpress Software.

You can get the best quality when making books cards and calendars with pictures type and graphics from a program that keeps the type and graphics in a vector format. Some examples of these programs are; Adobe Indesign and Quark Express. But before you rush out and get a copy of these programs, be warned; they are expensive and are difficult to learn.

Otherwise, any program that can create a series of jpegs is ok to use to design a book, many of our customers use TDA, ProSelect and even Adobe Photoshop. Once you complete your design , you need to import into Picpress software .Please make sure you allow at least 3mm right around for bleed and trim lines. Use a full frame template and watch for the red lines , showing where images will be trimmed and subsequently lost. This software will automatically convert to a PDF file ready for printing.

file specifications

  • Images should be colour corrected before submitting the book, this can be done by you ( make sure your monitors are calibrated) or your lab at an additional charge.
  • Soft cover page size is exactly the same as book size ordered.
  • Hard cover page size will be larger in height and width.
  • Files will be cropped 2-5mm from each edge, so keep critical image detail inside this 'bleed' border. Make sure you add 3mm bleed on all sides.
  • No more than 160 pages in one book.
  • Cards need to be designed laying flat, before folding, with an inside and outside, if no inside is created, the card will be blank on the inside.
  • All files need to be orientated as the book or card will be orientated, so when opened on the computer, the top of the book or card will be the top of the screen.
  • Your files need to be carefully checked before submitting as we print the files as they are supplied unless you opt for a colour correcting service from your lab.