Toby, the House Cat at TigerPress provides commercial printing info to keep your print jobs on time and under budget.

Of couse, we're biased here at Tigerpress, because we know we provide the best combination of value, quality, and service of any print vendor on the web, or anywhere else as far as we're concerned.

So, what's the House Cat's Best Tip? Simple. Avoid AAs. Author's Alternations will likely send you over budget on your print project.

Don't get us wrong, we don't have a problem with AAs. We'll be happy to color correct your photoshop files, or make type corrections to your Quark files, convert your PDF documents from process to spot, or even design your print project from ground zero.

But, we don't rely on AAs to make up for low-ball quoting, so we're just as happy to expedite your color brochure through pre-press to plate, then to press for printing, and lastly bindery for finishing before delivering your finished printed pieces.

But if you need to get the best price for whatever reason, then consider the following information when preparing your files for print.

Include All Artwork-Sometimes missing fonts can be substituted by your printer, but missing art cannot be corrected, unless it's a regular job that the printer has done before, and keeps common artwork on file. Low resolution artwork isn't recommended, but if that's what you send, that's what you'll see on the final brochure.

Bleed Artwork-Art, color blocks and photos need to extend beyond the page size (.125 of an inch is recommended) if bleeds are part of your brochure's design. Better to leave a gap between photos and the edge than to align the photo directly on the page edge.

Create Print-Ready PDFs-PDF documents are great. We appreciate, and even prefer using them in the pre-press process, but only if they are created print ready. Print ready means the PDF includes all fonts, all artwork is embedded and not downsampled less than 300 dpi, spot colors, if used, are retained, and the pages contain bleed.

Know Your Printer's Capabilities–Printing a 4-color job on a 2-color press can be done, but we don't recommend it. 6-color? Forget it. If you do leave your 4-color brochure with a shop that doesn't have a 4-color press, chances are that printer will broker your brochure out to another printer with a 4-color press, or possibly a wholesale gang run printer, which is fine, but now you will be paying a surcharge for the print broker.