Packaging files for print production

- [Instructor] You may, at some point, need to send your files across to a print service provider. Because they will ask for them. I always come back with the question, can't you go with a PDF. And get them to send me their PDF specifications. But it just doesn't work like that is practice. You always get one that needs them, and they might just be being kind. It might be that your preparation of the file doesn't meet their exact requirements and they just don't want to say. So cut them some, because they're probably just trying to do you a favor. I've come across that as well.

Have some conversations with them around everything they're expecting. If you've been working in RGB throughout, is that okay for them? Many modern work flows involving images are RGB through and through, with the printers doing high end conversions at their end. But make sure that they can do that. They might ask you to outline your fonts and you've seen that earlier on in this title, hopefully. If not, you can review that particular movie where that's happening.

If you're using TypeKit, you can send them the file and Creative Cloud will sync that for them, at their end. But really you don't want to get into a situation where you're sending font files to a printer. You just shouldn't really do that if you can avoid it. They're supposed to be able to do it for most font licenses for the purposes of output. But just to be on the safe side, see if there's any option you've got. And if in doubt, create a copy of your file and then outline the text and send them that.

So the process for packaging a file is pretty straight forward. In fact it's very similar to that in InDesign, if you've every done that. It is almost exactly the same. If I make my way over to the File menu you'll see Package is down here towards the bottom. And if I choose that. Then it needs to know basically where I'm going to create the package. If it's a document you haven't saved before then it will also ask you to save it prior to creating the copy for the package.

So, here, I'm just going to to create a new folder for this. So I'm just going to call it Output, just here on my desktop with some of the other things that are on there. And choose that. It will create other folders as necessary. This is what it will call the folder it puts inside the folder I've just specified. And then get it to copy the links across it. It will put those into a folder. Collect those in a separate folder, if you need to do that. So you'll have a folder called Links, with the things in there. And create document relative links for the new document that you're creating.

So it won't try to look for things on your file system. If you've outline your fonts you won't need to this step here. CJK, by the way, stands for Chinese Japanese and Korean and it doesn't need to Type kit. Cause like I said, if they've got Creative Cloud then it will sync from there. And if you need it, you can get a two generator text report at the same time telling you exactly what its added to that. With that, all you need to do it click package and it should just shoot straight through, and do that.

There you go. It's created it successfully. It's much faster than InDesign. But then again, often you've got lots and lots more pages than this single cover, just here. I can have a look at the package by doing the show package option there. And here it is. There is the file that I'm working with here. Here is my links folder. There's just a small illustrator file in there for a little logo up in the corner there. And that's it. It really is that simple.

But like I said, ask the printer or print service provider if there's any chance of them accepting a PDF. Because if they do, get them to give you the spec, and send the PDF across. That's a much safer way to do it, if they're agreeable with it.