Some Crucial Preparation Pointers for Your Catalog Printing

Preparing for catalog printing is not something you should take lightly. To match the quality and vib you see every day, you must be thorough with your preparations for catalog printing.

In this guide we will go through the crucial preparation pointers that you need to know for printing catalogs. It is important for you to remember this so that your catalog printing goes as smoothly and properly, helping you get the quality you want, just like those catalog samples.

1. Thoroughly check the content for errors – There is nothing more important to check in a color catalog than its content. Before mass production or full scale color catalogs can begin, it is mandatory for you to thoroughly check the content for any kind of spelling or grammar errors. From top to bottom, front and back, side to side and every which way, your whole content must be passed through and checked carefully. You will not want to mass produce content mistakes if you want to truly get effective color catalogs.

2. Review image choices and quality – You should also approach your image checks with the same kind of careful meticulousness when it comes to the image rendering. Make sure that all catalog imagers are in a high resolution and of course there should be no pixels, odd cuts, noise or out of place colors present. Make sure that you have other people looking through your catalog images as well. The more mistakes you spot and correct, the better the quality of your color catalog images and of course your catalog overall as well.

3. Check template settings and measurements – Of course, you should also check the template settings and measurements of the draft itself. You do not want to let the catalog printing company convert and adjust these things of course. In most cases, they might get things wrong and give you the look you do not want. That is why it is best for you to have a precise color catalog draft measured correctly to your specifications. Check everything and make sure that they are all to your liking.

4. Determine file format compatibility – Another important preparation for catalog printing is to check your file format’s compatibility. While most catalog printers will be able to accommodate most file formats out there, it is actually best to always use the format that is the MOST compatible.

Meaning you must go for the format that they typically use for actual full color catalog printing. Be it an Adobe InDesign file, a Microsoft Publisher file or just a document file from word processors, the more close your file format is to their native working format the better.

5. Do a test printing – Lastly, you can actually do a final check before you actually print your catalogs by doing your own test printing. In a lot of cases, you will spot all the gross errors easily when you actually print your custom catalog on your own as a rough sample.

It will just cost a few pages of printing but the corrections that you might spot should really make up for all the effort in sample printing. So make sure you reserve just a few pages for test printing your booklets. Believe me, it is better this way and in fact a lot more easier for you in the long run.

Great! If you follow through on most of the tips above, you should be able to fully and properly prepare your draft for full scale full color catalog printing. In all cases, this kind of checking is really worth it, with all the mistakes that get corrected because of these kinds of checks. Good Luck!