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Want to make sure your design or layout is 100 percent ready for catalog printing? Well, you have come to the right place. In this tutorial in catalog printing, I will give you the different steps in reviewing your designs for printing. Whether it is a template catalog or you are investing in custom catalog printing, these checks should help you weed out all the usual design errors and make sure you print catalogs that are close to perfect.

• Proofreading text – The first phase in checking any catalog design is to check and proofread the text. There are two main ways to quickly check your text for spelling and grammar errors. We have the software method and of course we have the traditional method of getting some help.

o Automatically using software – Many layout or publishing applications today offer speedy automatic proofreading of catalog text content. While these are not as accurate as a person actually doing the proofreading, features like spell checks and grammar checks in software typically can solve over 75% of your common errors. So it is good to activate the automatic spell check and grammar check in your software to cover most of the errors in your catalog printing design quickly.

o With actual help – The traditional method in checking catalog designs is where you get actual help from a person who will read the text to check for errors. In my experience it is good to ask several people to check your designs to make sure that nothing is missed. I recommend though that you do the automatic proofreading first using software so that the people who will actually check the layout will have an easier time.

You can ask your staff, your colleagues or even your friends and family to do this for you while you check other aspects of your catalog design. Try to have it checked at least two or three times for accuracy. With real people doing the checks, you should be able to clean out every error or mistake in your catalog text. Combine that with automatic software correction and your catalog text should be perfect enough for catalog printing.

• Image checks – After the text, your next objective is to review the images in your catalogs. This is an important part of your checking as well since images will carry the bulk of the “impressive” quality of your catalog printing. So make sure you do these checks on your images:

o Content check: First, make sure that the image actually contains the right object that you want to display. You will be surprised as to how some designers make the mistake of putting the wrong image in a certain spot and completely forgetting about it afterwards. So do the image “content” check first to make sure the image is indeed with the right object for the right position.

o Quality check: The next check is about the quality of the images. Is the cropping right? Are their distortions, errors or pixels in the image? Is there any kind of noise or dirt in the image? Make sure everything is crystal clear so that the image with the object looks as good as it can be for catalog printing.

o Resolution check: Finally, you should check your image resolution. If you inserted your image from a separate file, try to see the original resolution of the image. If it is lower than 300dpi then you are in trouble and would need a different image because your image is unfit. All catalog images must be 300dpi or higher to make sure that they print well with no pixels appearing in catalog printing.

• Checking Settings – Lastly, you should then just check the settings of your draft for catalog printing. It should be typically in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) color mode for proper printing. Moreover, it should of course be in the right file format. Just ask what your catalog printing company prefers when it comes to printing files. Match what they need so that you are sure that nothing goes wrong with your catalog printing.

So those are the different checks you need to do to make sure your catalog designs are ready 100 percent. This should take you no more than 30 minutes with a little training. Good luck with your catalog printing!