To insure timely production and delivery of your products, providing the proper artwork is essential. So what is the proper artwork? Read below to learn more about the two types of artwork that suppliers use to decorate your products - vector and bitmap.
Vector Art
Vector art is the most commonly used format that suppliers use to decorate products. Vector art is created in a drawing program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw by connecting points with curved or straight line segments. Shapes and text can be combined within a document to create an art file with and extension of .eps.
Each shape in a vector file is separate object and can be easily be selected and modified - change colors, edit copy, re-draw shapes. Because the points that make up vector files are based on mathematical formulas, the art can be scaled without a loss of image quality.
Vector files do not rely on resolution. For this reason, vector art files are smaller than bitmaps, which makes them ideal for quick transfers over the web or email. They are perfect for long-term storage solutions and image databases, such as the Imaging System at Newton.
Vector files cannot recreate the tones and colors represented in a photograph. Bitmap files are only acceptable for photo-reproduction and process color work.
Placed images and outlining fonts
Two of the most common mistakes make when submitting vector art for your products are include place images and not outline fonts. Placed images are bitmap files that have been placed into a vector file. While they are in a vector file, they still retain their properties as bitmap files. Since this is the case, the placed image cannot be manipulated without distorting the image.
When text is used in a vector file, the correct font must be loaded on the computer in order for it to display the text with the proper type face. Since it is nearly impossible for every supplier to have every font, it is a good idea to have your text “outlined” or turned into a shape. This can be easily done in a few quick mouse clicks in either of the drawing programs previously mentioned.
Bitmap Art
Bitmap files use small pixels of color lined up in a grid to produce an image. How many pixels? that depends on the quality or “resolution” of the image. Resolution is measured in dots-per-inch (dpi) which represents how many pixels of color are contained in one inch of the image. A higher resolution mean the image contains more pixels which means more color information and results in a better image.
However, a higher resolution also means a larger file size. Images found on the internet are usually considered low-resolution at 72 dpi. This smaller file size makes it easy for web pages to load. Since the standard resolution for printing is 300 dpi, internet images are not accepted for printing purposes.
Products that are decorated using a four-color process will sometimes accept high resolution (300 dpi or more) bitmap image. Acceptable file types are .bmp, .tif. or .jpg. Because these file types are nearly impossible to manipulate without being distorted, these images must be submitted as high resolution image and at the correct size for the product.
Your Newton Representative can help you get the right art for your products.