The Bleed is a slightly larger margin applied to the edge of every page to ensure the page can be trimmed down to the final size. Just be sure to turn them off before exporting your final PDF. If crop marks are present, there’s a good chance the marks will appear as dark lines in the corners of your pages.Ĭrop marks are helpful when laying out your file. Our printers use a trimming process based on the book size you’ve selected.
It’s very important to note that Lulu does NOT use crop marks. Also called ‘trim lines’ the crops show up in the corners to allow the paper cutter to align and perform a straight cut. Traditionally, crop marks indicate where the printers should trim the page. You’ll need that control over elements in your file to generate a quality, print-ready PDF. Software like InDesign, Affinity Publisher, or even Scribus offers more control over a range of settings, including image quality and color space. That’s one of the primary reasons I tend to shy away from recommending Word for custom book designs that incorporate images. Word will only export at the given settings, so you won’t have a lot of options to control the image quality once you’re in Word. If you’re working in Word, you’ll need to be sure your images are already using sRGB or CMYK for your images. Importantly, you want to be sure your file uses the same color space our printers use so that we can be sure to the colors you see on your screen match the colors in the printed book.įor Lulu, we prefer sRGB and CMYK color. I strongly recommend using high-resolution images in your file.Ĭolor Space defines the specific set of colors and how they are organized. Grainy or pixelated images are the most common issue you’ll see with lower resolution images. You can use lower resolution images, but the print quality may be off. Now, if the original image is less than 300 dpi, it may not be possible to achieve the image resolution we require. PDF and image compression is common for software like MS Word, so be on the lookout for anything that may shrink your file size. You’ll also need to look at your software for the best way to output a print-ready PDF that retains the image resolution.
Look for 300 dots per inch (dpi) for all your images. It’s valuable to understand the recommendations and requirements for your book design and file. Don’t get stressed though! These aren’t difficult to apply to most files and the software you use to create your PDF will almost always cover many of these elements for you. Lulu has a set of rules we need files to adhere to. Printing a book always begins from a PDF. A Print-Ready File is always a PDF, and a Print-Ready PDF always uses the printer-on-demand provider’s specifications.
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