By prints.com.pk · Published July 31, 2026
Every product page on this site lists the same handful of artwork requirements — CMYK, 300 DPI, 3mm bleed, outlined fonts, print-ready PDF — because they're not category-specific rules, they're the real, physical constraints of offset and digital print production. This guide explains what each one actually means and why it matters, once, in full, instead of as a five-line checklist you have to take on faith.
Colour Mode: Always CMYK, Never RGB
Screens display colour as RGB (red, green, blue light); printers lay down ink as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). If you design in RGB and send it straight to print, the printer converts it automatically — and the colours shift, sometimes dramatically, especially bright blues, greens and some oranges that RGB can display but CMYK ink physically can't reproduce. Setting your file to CMYK from the start, in whatever software you're using, means what you see while designing is much closer to what actually prints.
Resolution: 300 DPI Minimum
DPI (dots per inch) measures how much image detail exists per inch of physical print. A logo or photo that looks sharp on a laptop screen (typically 72–110 DPI) can look visibly blurry or pixelated once it's enlarged onto a 4-inch label or a full box panel, because there simply isn't enough source detail to fill that physical space cleanly. 300 DPI at the artwork's actual final print size is the standard that holds up under close inspection — the size matters as much as the DPI number itself, since a 300 DPI image saved at the wrong dimensions still prints soft once scaled up.
Bleed: 3mm, and Why It's Not Optional
Bleed is extra artwork extending 3mm past your design's final trim edge on every side. Cutting a physical sheet is never pixel-perfect — the blade or die has a small tolerance either way — and without bleed, that tolerance shows up as a thin white sliver along one or more edges where the background colour didn't quite reach the cut line. Extending your background (colour, pattern or image) 3mm beyond the trim line means the cut can land anywhere within that tolerance and still look intentional, edge-to-edge, with no white gap.
Safe Area: Keep Important Content 4mm Inside the Trim Line
The safe area is the inverse of bleed — a 4mm margin measured inward from the trim line where you should avoid placing text, logos, or anything that would look bad if it got cut slightly. Cutting tolerance works both ways: just as background needs to extend past the edge, foreground content needs to sit clear of it. A logo or a line of text positioned right at the trim edge risks getting visibly clipped if the cut lands even a millimeter off-centre.
Fonts: Always Outlined (Converted to Curves)
If your file references a font by name rather than converting the text to outlined vector shapes, the print file only displays correctly on a machine that has that exact font installed. Send a file with live (non-outlined) text and the font gets silently substituted on a machine that doesn't have it — which can shift line breaks, change spacing, or replace special characters entirely, none of which you'll catch until the proof comes back wrong. Converting text to outlines (sometimes called "create outlines" or "convert to curves" depending on the software) locks the exact letterforms into the file permanently, independent of what fonts are installed anywhere else.
File Format: Print-Ready PDF Preferred
A print-ready PDF with fonts outlined and images embedded (not linked externally) is the most reliable format across every category we print — it travels as one self-contained file with nothing that can go missing in transit. AI files work too if outlines and embedding are handled the same way. Avoid sending raw Word documents, PowerPoint slides, or low-resolution JPEGs pulled from a website or social media post — none of these carry the colour mode, resolution or bleed information a print file actually needs, and re-doing artwork after a failed proof costs more time than starting correctly.
Material-Specific Notes for Stickers & Labels
The three sticker and label materials add a few requirements beyond the universal list above, covered in more depth in our sticker material guide:
- Vinyl — needs a closed vector cut path where a custom die-cut shape is required, and a transparent background where the design calls for it.
- Paper — don't rely on transparency or white ink unless it's confirmed with us separately; paper stock behaves differently from vinyl and clear film here.
- Clear — any area meant to stay transparent needs to be clearly marked, and white-ink areas (needed to make colour visible on a clear or dark surface) must sit on their own layer, named "WHITE" so our production team applies it correctly.
Dielines: Don't Move, Recolour, or Delete the Cut Lines
For jewellery boxes, box packaging and die-cut stickers, we provide a size-specific dieline — the template showing exactly where cuts, folds and creases happen. Design on top of the dieline layer without moving, recolouring or deleting it, and keep artwork clear of locking slots and glue zones specifically, since branding placed there either gets obscured when the box is assembled or interferes with the fold itself. Every jewellery box product page and box category page has a downloadable dieline for exactly this reason — design against the real template, not an estimated size.
The Fastest Way to Avoid a Failed Proof
Every job gets a free digital proof before production starts — that's your real checkpoint, not the file submission itself. But a file that already follows the requirements above (CMYK, 300 DPI at final size, 3mm bleed, 4mm safe area, outlined fonts, print-ready PDF) usually clears proofing in one round instead of two or three, which is the actual time you save by getting this right upfront rather than relying on the proof to catch everything.
If you don't have design software or the time to build a file to spec, you don't need to learn it — send us your logo, product photos, or even a rough concept on WhatsApp and our design team will build a genuine print-ready file from it, checked against these exact requirements before it reaches production.