Cover Layout

• All Images or artwork must be submitted in CMYK format at a 300 dpi resolution.

• When you lay out the cover of a book in a desktop application, make sure that the front and back covers, as well as the spine are designed as one contiguous page.

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• White Space: This .25-inch white space allows us to place trim, registration and color identification marks, which will be used during printing.
  Bleed: Any background color or photograph that extends to the edge of the page after trimming is called a bleed. To ensure ink coverage to the bleed edge, the image or background color must extend .125 inch beyond the trim. This area will be trimmed away after printing. Neither trim nor registration marks should be placed inside the bleed area.

• Spine Width: To determine the book's spine size, divide the number of pages by the paper's thickness (measured in "pages per inch" or ppi). Our 60# paper is 435 ppi and our 70# is 384 ppi. (Example: 256 page book printed on 60# would be 256 ÷ 435 = 0.59" spine.) For "safety", provide at least .0625" tolerance within the text on the spine. There can be no printing on a spine that is less than .25" (1/4).

• Other Papers:

• 80# Gloss Book = .0039 Caliper @ 512 PPI.

• 80# Matte Book = .0046 Caliper @ 434 PPI.

• 100# Gloss Book = .0047 Caliper @ 426 PPI.

• 100# Matte Book = .0061 Caliper @ 328 PPI.

• Spine Width and Variance: It is important to keep in mind that each book printed at Keystone is individually printed and bound. Therefore you should avoid hard vertical lines separating your front or back cover panels from your spine and should allow for at least a 0.125" variance of your spine on each side (for example, the text on a 1" spine should be no larger than 0.75" wide). While we can accommodate special requests for books with less than 110 pages to have spine text, we cannot guarantee placement of the spine text and will be unable to replace any printed copies that are unsatisfactory due to the spine text. For books with a page count of less than 110 pages, we strongly recommend a blank spine.

• Color Breaks on the Spine: This involves a spine whose color is different from the color used on the front or back cover. We call this a "color break." Because the bulking of paper can vary slightly, it is inadvisable to create a color break between the spine and both the front and back covers. It is better to have only one color break, either on the front or the back.
  Another solution is to extend the spine color over onto the front and/or back cover by about 1/4 inch.

• For best results text should be at least 0.25" from trim edges of the book.

• If scanning to create the digital file, scan all images at 300 dpi CMYK.

• Black elements should NOT be built in "Registration" black. These elements should be built out of "Rich" black. For best results, we recommend the CMYK values of 60% Cyan, 40% Magenta, 40% Yellow, and 100% Black. CMYK total value should not exceed 240%.

• The barcode should be built in 100% Black only.

• File Types Accepted:
  PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PDF, PNG and EPS

• PDF NOTES : ADOBE ACROBAT & ACROBAT DISTILLER