With the wide variety of software available to our customers to compose their jobs, it can be a challenge to ensure we can process all their files. To this end, Oxford Web Printing has standardized our file submission guidelines using Adobe PDF(Portable Document Format) files. Virtually all design software will save or export in PDF format.

There are some options available when saving your publication as a PDF file. Due to the varied control layouts within the different software available, a general description of which options to use will be the most effective.

SAVING YOUR JOB AS A PDF FILE
Below is a brief explanation of relevant settings for saving your file, and recommendations on which choices to make.

Compatability
When saving your file, one of the primary choices is "Compatability". This determines how modern a PDF you will be creating. OWP has the most up to date versions of Acrobat, we recommend however using the "Acrobat 7 (PDF 1.6)" setting as a good all around choice that balances compatability with features.

Compression
Compression allows the PDF to save as a smaller file - at the expense of quality. With proper compression choices virtually no quality loss occurs, however to ensure our customers always get the maximum quality possible, we encourage you to turn compression off. We can handle larger files with ease.
The compression settings are broken down into three categories: Color Images, Grayscale Images, and Monochrome Images. In each of the three categories, OWP recommends a setting of "Do Not Downsample", and a Compression setting of "None".

Marks and Bleeds
Marks are the little lines, crosshairs, colour bars and other information that you can see around a page of a publication when it is prepared for press. OWP uses an advanced page imposition system that includes all the marks needed at production time. Therefore, OWP recommends turning all Marks OFF.
Bleed is the addition of extra page height and width beyond the size of your final trimmed publication. Bleed is required if any colour, picture, or type goes right to the edge of the page. Due to the paper shifting during the printing process adding the proper amount of Bleed ensures no whitespace will creep onto the edges of your publication. OWP recommends a BLEED setting of .25" on all four sides of each page.

Output
Output is where colour, profile matching and PDF standards are chosen.
Standard, available on some systems, is where you would choose compatability with various PDF/X versions. OWP recommends Standard be set to "None".
Color Conversion converts all the defined colours within your document to match a defined Colour Profile. Incorrectly assigned profiles can cause more problems than no profile. OWP recommends Color Conversion be set to "No Color Conversion".
Profile Inclusion Policy determines how colour profiles are attached to your PDF. OWP recommends Profile Inclusion Policy be set to "Don't Include Profiles".

Advanced
The Advanced choices contain items that will mostly be disabled. One item of note however is Subsetting fonts. Subsetting removes unused characters from your PDF to save space. For instance, suppose you type the word "Hello" in 12pt Times and turn subet on. All the Times characters other than H,e,l and o would be removed from the document. This saves space, but if at the last minute you call us up and request the word "Hello" be changed to "Hi" - we would be unable to, as the "i" was removed during the creation of your PDF. Therefore, OWP recommends Subsetting of fonts be either unchecked or set to Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than: 0%. This ensures that the entire font is included, allowing you more last minute flexibility.

•• Once all these settings have been chosen, save your PDF. The created file can be sent to Oxford Web Printing via the internet to our Secured Server. (See Sending Files to OWP ).