Photoshop Tutorials

Step 10 - Get ready for the Mock-ups

There's a time when you would like to present your work to the client. However, it is rather a bad idea to send him just the preview of two files (inside and outside). For sure he will feel a bit confused. Your client don't have to know anything about print, but he would like to see some mock-up before he will spend his money. It's a best way for both sides. Let's try to make some mock-up. My mock-up is pretty small because of the limit in width of the website. Try to make your mock-ups bigger, just a bit smaller from the real size (in between 20% and 30% of actual dimensions). You can actually use my mockups. There's nothing more than a Distort transformation (Well, just a little bit warp on the boundaries). Just place your design above mine, go to Edit > Transform > Distort and try to fit the shape. You can even resize my file for here the quality isn't important, just follow the shape.

Try to make mock-ups for all the pages and if you think you can handle this, prepare some 3d view. If it will help you anyhow, you can download my mock-up psd file.

mockup.zip | 3 MB

Step 11 - Saving for print

The best thing is to have a contact with a printing service. I don't actually have to specially save files for my printing company accepts my psd files. However not always you can send files that weight 2GB and more- it is just technically hard if you can't just jump into their office. But actually there are compressions that will allow you to save the files without quality loss (mostly). First of all, you can save the document as a TIFF file with LZW compression turned on. Sometimes you may be asked to not attach the ICC profile to the document:

I'm quite sure that most of printing services will accept a file saved in this way. While the PSD file weight 250 MB, the tiff without mostly any quality loss weight only 26 MB (without layer). It is much easier to send that file away. Consider, that maybe you will be asked to make some changes inside the document. The second way to save the file is PDF with press quality. Choose your quality on top of the box. Also uncheck the option that will allow you (or others) to edit the file (do otherwise, if the printer will ask you for it).

Make sure that you correctly choose the destination (hovered - a printing standard). Ask for it your printing service.

And... That's all. You are ready now to create a print-ready brochure from beginning to end. Hopefully this will help you to work with printing purpose files. Moreover- you are able to correctly prepare such things like business cards, invitations, flyers and so on. Just stick to the rules. Thank you.

Final Results

Download the PSD

Trifold.zip | 123 MB

Authors Comment

Share your Feedback