Ensuring we are supplied with appropriate files will result in jobs being delivered on time and in the best quality possible. 
If you have any questions in regards to supplying or setting up a file for print, contact our in-house graphic design and pre-press team.

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General Artwork Specifications:

Abel Labels accepts Print Ready PDF’s with the following specifications:

• All colours are converted to CMYK (digital printing) or PMS (flexographic printing)
• Minimum of 3mm bleed 
• Photo and Illustration resolution should be at 300dpi
• Fonts and links embedded or provided separately
• No printers marks (I.e. trim marks)
• No finishing details or cutting lines on print files.
  

Spot Varnish, Foiling, and Emboss:

Any finishing/embellishments areas should be provided in a separate PDF.

Please follow these instructions:

• Open your artwork in Adobe Illustrator or Indesign
• Create a new layer for the finish “I.e., Gold Foil”.
• Create a new colour swatch and name it “Gold Foil”.
• Select the elements you wish to enhance and duplicate them to the new layer (these elements need to be identical to the design)
• Convert all elements to this new spot colour.
• Supply this as a PDF along with your artwork.

Tip: Sometimes screens, foil blocks, and emboss blocks, can shift slightly when applied to designs. Please avoid applying finishes to thin lines, small text, or finely detailed artwork. Minimum size for finishing areas is 0.5mm. 
It's generally recommended that finishing/embellishments areas be kept at least 3mm away from cutting area. 

Forme-cutting:

To show the final cut size of your design, please supply us with a cutting line as a separate PDF.

• On a separate layer, with a spot colour named “die-cutter or forme cut”, create the shape and dimension you wish us to cut in a 1pt stroke. Export and supply as a PDF.
• Rectangular, square, and most unique shapes, will need rounded corners to avoid what the industry call Dog Ears: the corners of labels curling up. Dog's Ears will make your label susceptible to fraying, peeling, and unsticking. The three most common corner radius sizes are 0.5, 1 and 2mm.

Tip: To speed up production and lower costs, we have a range of pre-existing die cutters. Contact the team to chat about a size that might suit you.

Considerations:

For updates and changes to designs, we will most likely need the original design files. Ideally, this would be a packaged Illustrator or Indesign file. Please follow these instructions for packaging a file:

• Open your file in Adobe
• Go to file, then package
• Specify in options that all links and fonts be copied to the folder
• Send the folder to our pre-press team

Tips and Tricks:

• Providing a packaged design file, along with the print-ready PDF, will give us the most flexibility when it comes to producing your design.
• We recommend using a qualified graphic designer to set up print-ready files for commercial printing.
• Elements are best kept 3mm away from the cutting line (or risk losing them!)
• Remove any effects (shadows, gradients, noise, etc.) used to make the design look "real" on screen, but aren't used in final print production.
• Clipping masks do not remove unwanted elements but simply hide them. To avoid the risk of them unexpectedly popping up later on your print, choose to remove elements instead permanently. It's always good practice to clean up.
• Rich black generally provides the best coverage for large solid areas on paper stock. We recommend using a 60 / 40 / 40 / 100 ratio.
• A Pantone colour book is a reliable way to pick Pantone and CMYK colours. We have a set on-site which anyone is welcome to use.
• To pick colour from your computer, set your screen brightness to 50%, and select something around 10-25% brighter than you are after. 
• When printing in multicolour (CMYK) keep the amount of ink mixing to a minimum for bright and clean colours. 
• Avoid online platforms and tools that provide a free design service. Most of the time they are not compatible with our systems and will need to be remade with our Adobe software: costing you even more time and money. 

Getting Started:

 Example of Print Ready File