There are seven important steps that you should do to prepare your rack cards for online printing. Printing rack cards online is a little bit different than printing them traditionally with a local printing company. You will need to be a bit careful with your checks and choices since everything is done quickly online. So go over these steps one by one and make sure you remember them in your rack card printing.

1. Template size checks – First check the template size. There are many different kinds of rack card templates, and your own draft rack cards should match the ones that are being used by the rack card printer. Using standard rack card templates should help make the process of online printing easier and faster for you since there will be no conversions needed for your particular rack card prints.

2. Printing bleed checks – Make sure that you check your drafts if it has the proper printing bleed. This is especially important if your full color rack cards have color or texture backgrounds. A printing bleed is basically an extension of your background that serves as a consideration for the minute discrepancies in cutting and printing. With printing bleeds, you won’t have those odd empty spaces on the borders of your color rack cards.

3. Color mode matching –Always make sure that your rack card drafts also have the right color mode. There are different color modes in printing, and the most common are CMYK or four color, digital RGB and black & white printing. Your prints should always match the color mode of your online printer.

This means that if your online rack card printer uses CMYK four color printing, your draft’s color mode should also match like that. This ensures that no odd color conversions take place when you print rack cards online. What you see should be what you get once they are done.

4. Image review – Never forget to do an image review before you go ahead in rack card printing. Make sure that all your images within your draft are in high resolution and of course are enhanced properly for better rack card printing. Have other experts check your images as well to make sure that they translate well into your rack card designs.

5. Text review – Also of course, make sure that the text content of your rack cards is reviewed before handing them over to online printing. Besides checking the spelling and grammar of the text, you should also see if the style and the pacing of the content is appropriate for the audience. Have other people check and read your text as well to get the best and most thorough reviews. Make sure you eliminate all other mistakes in this text review.

6. File format review – Before you hand over your rack card draft to the online printer, make sure you do a file format review as well. You probably saved your rack cards in a specific format that is native to your design application. Make sure that that same file format is accepted by your online printer.

If they cannot accept it, it is best for you to do the conversion yourself so that you can see how the conversion will affect your design. It is always best to match that file format with the online printer to prevent these conversions from ruining your time in online printing.

7. Preparing for transfer – Finally, you can then prep your rack card drafts for online printing. Besides submitting the document file that is native to you and the printing company, make sure you also send an image file and a compressed zip file of your design. These other different file formats should act as a backup just in case the document gets corrupted during attachment and transmission of the file.

Great! Now it should be easier for you to prepare your rack cards to be printed online. Just follow all seven steps and should be done quickly.