“You’d be surprised how often albums are held up by print file problems that could have been fixed before the order was sent.”

We have a long checklist of things we review if you specify Full Colour Service. That “extra pair of eyes” checking out your page layouts is great, but your order gets held up if we find something wrong – so why not check the files yourself?

Check your print files for problems before you send your order – and get your album faster

We can save you heaps and time and hassles if we print for you, but you don’t want to swap one set of hassles for another! Here are a few suggestions to get your printing back faster.

1. MOST IMPORTANT: when things go wrong, and they may from time to time, understand what caused the problem and, if necessary, change your workflow accordingly. You’d be surprised how often people continue to have the same difficulties. We have specialist staff to help you sort out any problems you may be having.


2. CHECK YOUR HIGH-RES FILES BEFORE YOU SEND THEM TO US - for rotated images, aspect ratio problems, colour or pixelation issues and so on. We have a long checklist of things we review if you specify Full Colour Service. But we recommend you do it yourself! Our “extra pair of eyes” may be great, but your order will be held back if we need to ask what you want to do, or to request missing files. Plus you may incur extra charges. Sometimes, with the best will in the world, we don’t notice things you might not be happy with, but missed yourself. (Check out our Full Colour Service checklist at the bottom of this email.)


3. As well as the high-res output files you want us to print, please send us the Photojunction files (PJF and PJT, plus the proxies). That means, if something goes wrong we can very clearly see what your intentions were, and put things right. Even rebuild the page layouts if necessary.


4. As we said in an earlier article, send everything together (and don’t forget the cover image!). Don’t send your order ahead of the images. It will slow things down, not speed them up.


5. Clearly state what service you want, Full Colour service or Print-Ready. Remember Print-Ready is just that. The images must be ready to print, and comply with our file specs.


6. Full Colour service means “another pair of eyes” to check out your work, and colour correct for you. We recommend this service for all except the experts. Most of our printing clients use it.


7. Make sure your work conforms to our file specifications, particularly printing resolution and file naming conventions. You’ll find our specs printed on our latest price list, in our Lab Guide or on our web site. It’s a fact of life that no lab can print your files unless they comply with their specifications, and we do need to charge if we have to modify them in any way.

Our Full Colour Service file quality check list (check yourself before you send!)

• Are your order instructions clear?
• Is protective coating required on the prints?
• Are copy albums required?
• Have you included all image files (including the cover image)?
• Are your file specifications correct (especially resolution (DPI) and filenames)?
• Are the images ICC-profiled? Are there any other obvious colour management problems?
• Are your images correctly exposed? White balance OK etc?
• Are the images soft or pixelated?
• Are your scans or image files big enough/good enough to print?
• Are you sending layered PSD files (required for Full Colour Service, but not suitable for Print-Ready)?
• Are there opacity issues (we recommend no less than 60%)?
• Are there alignment problems in your page layouts?
• Are image borders too close to the page edge in your layouts?
• Are there rotational problems or scaling problems in your layouts?
• Are all the images present in the layouts?
• Are all the images in the final layouts for printing present? Sized and cropped etc as intended?
• Are your panorama pages split in appropriate positions?
• Is any artwork required? Do you want Queensberry to do it? Are your instructions clear?