What File Format Should I Use?

You may be wondering what the best file format is for printing. And there is a simple answer - PDF.

PDF, or Portable Document Format, was created specifically for instances where you need to ensure that a file can be transmitted without changing in any way, such as sending your file to a printer like The Artstract Co. PDF is ideal for our purposes as it can be relied on to open on our machines the same way as on yours and offers flexible printing options. However, at last check, Adobe Acrobat, the program used to create PDF files, costs $550 - and that's in addition to the software that you actually create your document in.

Luckily, we can open most file formats including those from Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, CorelDRAW, AutoCAD, Microsoft Publisher, as well as most common formats such as JPEG and TIFF. Unfortunately, most of these formats are not well suited to being transported from one computer to another, with Microsoft programs being particularly problematic. As such, we WILL NOT run files from many programs without having you first approve a proof. This could be as simple as letting us open the file to create a PDF which can be emailed back to you for approval, or you could come in to look at a proof.

You may also be interested in knowing about an alternative to Microsoft Office which will create PDF files on it's own. OpenOffice.org is an open source alternative to Microsoft Office that opens and saves to Microsoft Office file formats. Most importantly though, Open Office will create PDF files without the use of Acrobat, and it's completely free. OpenOffice.org can be downloaded from their web site at www.openoffice.org.