Connecting and Signing On:

Your FTP program will need 3 pieces of information:

• The FTP/IP Address (or "host name"), in this case ftp.capitolpress.com
  
• The name of your account for our FTP site (or "user id")
  
• The password for that account (passwords are case sensitive)

Some things to keep in mind when using our FTP Site are:

Upload speeds are influenced by the speed of your internet connection and the amount of traffic on the internet while you are uploading.

Files larger than 750 MB should be put onto a DVD and sent to Capitol Press, due to the extended upload and download times.

Please make sure that all fonts are compressed into a .zip type file. If fonts are not put into a compressed file they tend to get stripped out of the file transmission.

Do not use spaces or other special characters in your file names, try to stick to A-Z, 0-9 and hyphen (-) or underscores (_) only. Some files with spaces or other characters in the name may get lost or corrupted.

Please let us know as soon as you have finished uploading so that we can download the file. If you have a problem or make a mistake, you will not be able to erase from the FTP, just start a new upload and make sure that it is marked as "v2", "new", "final", etc. so that we can tell which file to download.

Your sales representative will give you a password and a user name for you to access your FTP area on our website.

Programs designed specifically for FTP file transfers work more effectively than a web browser. We have listed two free programs below that work very well:

For a PC you can use Filezilla, free, from this web page (http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client)

For a MAC you can use Cyberduck, free, from this web page (http://cyberduck.ch/)

To use your web browser for uploading, click the following link:ftp.capitolpress.com, (ftp://ftp.capitolpress.com/)

How to make a PDF:

We always prefer to receive original native files, (ie. InDesign, QuarkXpress) but if you wish to provide a PDF instead, these guidelines and instructions will be of use to you.

InDesign: The easiest method to save a press-ready PDF is by Exporting your document as an Adobe PDF with the Preset set to "High Quality Print." That's all there is to it.

Illustrator: Save your document as an Adobe PDF with the Preset set to "High Quality Print."

QuarkXpress: If you must use QuarkXpress, we recommend you Export your layout as a PDF using the "Press High-Quality" PDF Style.

In any application, set your PDF settings to the highest quality possible and if at all possible as a PDF/X-4 or higher.

PDFs are designed to be final, uneditable files. This is not always the case but try to remember that PDFs are not as easy to edit as native files. PDFs alone do not require fonts but sometimes editing a PDF will require the proper fonts.

If your document size is equal to the final trim size of your piece, please remember to include bleed (usually an extra .125") in your PDF. Also try to have all the images and colors that are used in creating your PDF already converted to their proper format. If your job is to print CMYK, please try to have any RGB or Pantone colors pre-converted. All colors in your PDF will be converted to their proper format, but the control we have in that conversion process is less than if we were working from native files.

PDFs provide many advantages but one must be careful in how that PDF is created when its purpose is for print. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.