Artwork Specification and General Information
In order for all jobs to run smoothly, all artwork should be Camera Ready Artwork. What is Camera Ready
Artwork? Camera Ready Artwork is digital artwork that has been sized for the intended imprint area and
can be handled in various digital formats. However, there are really only two types of Camera Ready Artwork
standards. One is Vector and the other is Raster.
A. Vector Art: It's the most widely used and the preferred type of
artwork. This type of artwork is digitally rendered in a mathematical formula using what is called anchors
and paths. It's artwork that can be scaled in inches to any size up or down without losing its resolution.
Although this is the preferred type of artwork, it sometimes doesn't produce the desired effect that
is needed. That is when raster artwork might be more suitable.
B. Raster Art: This type of artwork (Just like Vector Art) is also
widely used. Raster artwork is digitally rendered using small little squares called pixels. When using
this type of artwork, a certain protocol must be followed in order to produce the best quality prints.
1. The artwork must be (depending on the project) at the right dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels
per inch). 300 dpi is the standard for good quality prints.
2. The artwork must be authored at the intended printable size or larger
and at the right dpi. For example, if raster artwork was authored at let's say 3 inches by 2 inches (for
a chest area print on a t shirt) and then later on needed to be scaled up to 8 inches by 14 inches it
would lose a tremendous amount of image quality and basically produce a very distorted print. It's better
to always author at a larger size than needed and then scale the artwork down to the size required for
the print. |
