How To Achieve Maximum Quality From Your Artwork

Whether you’re ordering business cards, posters, banners, exhibition graphics or large-format prints, the quality of your final product starts long before it reaches the printer.

At Reprohouse, we’re passionate about delivering maximum quality print solutions for businesses across the UK.  To help our customers get the very best results, we check every artwork file before production. However, there are several simple steps you can take when creating your design to ensure your print looks as professional as possible.

Here’s our guide to creating artwork that is ready for printing and delivers maximum print quality every time.

Start With The Correct Artwork Size

One of the most important factors in producing a high-quality print is designing your artwork at the correct size from the beginning.

Professional design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and Adobe

Photoshop gives you complete control over the document dimensions, image quality and export settings. Canva can also be a useful alternative for creating simple marketing materials and promotional graphics.

Creating artwork at the intended print size helps avoid unnecessary enlargement or resizing before production. When artwork is significantly increased in size, images can become pixelated, text can appear less sharp, and overall print quality may suffer.

As a general rule, the closer your artwork is to the final print dimensions, the better the finished result will be.

Use High Resolution Images

Low resolution images are one of the most common reasons for poor quality prints.

Images taken from websites, social media platforms or screenshots may look sharp on a screen but often lack the resolution required for professional print.

For the best results, ensure all images are supplied at a resolution of at least 300dpi at their final print size. This provides the level of detail needed to produce sharp photographs, clear graphics and professional printed materials.

If you’re creating large format graphics such as banners, exhibition displays or wall graphics, the ideal resolution may vary depending on the viewing distance, but quality sourced images are always essential.

Design In CMYK Colour Mode

Many customers create artwork using RGB colour mode, which is designed for digital screens.

Professional printing uses CMYK inks (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black), which means colours can appear different when printed compared to how they look on a computer monitor or mobile device.

Setting your artwork up in CMYK from the start helps create a closer match between your on-screen design and the final printed product. This is particularly important for branding, marketing materials and colour-sensitive projects.

While some colour variation is normal between scans and print, working in CMYK significantly improves colour accuracy and consistency.

Save And Supply Artwork As A PDF

When submitting artwork for printing, pdf is widely recognized as the best file format.

A good pdf preserves:

·         Fonts

·         Images

·         Layouts

·         Vector graphics

·         Colour settings

This ensures your artwork appears exactly as intended when it reaches our production team.

When exporting your PDF, choose the highest print quality settings available and ensure any bleed requirements are included if your artwork extends to the edge of the finished product.

Providing a print-ready PDF helps reduce delays, prevents formatting issues and ensuresa the smoothest possible production process.

Avoid Relying On AI Generated Artwork

AI generated images have become increasingly popular, but they can create unexpected problems when used for professional printing.

Although AI artwork may look impressive on screen, many files contain hidden quality issues that become more noticeable once printed. These can include blurred details, distorted text, inconsistent lines, image artefacts and insufficient resolution.

This is especially important for large format printing, where graphics are often viewed at a much larger size than they appear on a screen.

For the best results, we recommend using professionally created artwork, high resolution photography, licensed stock imagery or original design files wherever possible.

If you choose to use AI generated imagery, ensure the file has been thoroughly checked and is suitable for the intended print size before submitting it for production.

Thank you for reading our guide on setting up your artwork correctly. By having correct artwork it allows us to get printing quicker and ready in your hands in no time!