The price for a Basic PDF is £1 per page, regardless of page size, with a minimum PDF charge of £15 per original document. This PDF is very suitable for simple black only jobs with many pages.
Fonts will be embedded, with TrueType converted to Type 1. Minor text reflow will not be adjusted, although there may well not be any. It will not be changed in colour, so, for example, if the original document was a Word file all the colours in the PDF will still be RGB. Picture quality will not be checked, so it may contain 72dpi images. Higher than 350dpi images will not be down-sampled; this is a benefit when bitmaps are being used (often as logos) where vector images are really needed.
If you have any doubts about the skill of the originator of the document, I suggest you allow for some studio time so that we have the budget to intervene and make some adjustments.
Amendments (other than those included in the standard prices described above) to the source document or the PDF are charged at £60 per hour with a minimum charge of £10. This may involve making text alterations, changing page sizes, adding bleed, replacing logos, replacing halftones etc.
Please note that you will be charged £10 for us to investigate a document if the job does not go ahead.
Please send the job to us by email, ISDN, via our FTP server, post or courier, preferably with some proofs. Once the PDF is completed, we will send it to you by email or ISDN (charged at cost) or post it on a CD. Writing the CD and postage is free, but if you would like the CD sent to you via Royal Mail Special Delivery by
The price for a Press Quality PDF is £5 per page, regardless of page size, with a minimum PDF charge of £30 per original document. So a Press Quality PDF of a 16 page A4 brochure set in Microsoft Publisher by someone who has left all the pictures in RGB will only cost £80.
This PDF will be created to the PDF/x-1a specification. It will be thoroughly checked and tested on our RIP before we send it to you. Fonts will be embedded with TrueType converted to Type 1. RGB pictures will be checked for resolution and changed to CMYK, RGB black will be changed to 100% process black, RGB “spot colour jobs” will be made spot colour.
If you would like a low resolution PDF proof emailed to you, this is available at no extra charge.
Remember that if the document needs amendment, for example bleed to be added, then a studio time charge will be incurred.
Amendments (other than those included in the standard prices described above) to the source document or the PDF are charged at £60 per hour with a minimum charge of £10. This may involve making text alterations, changing page sizes, adding bleed, replacing logos, replacing halftones etc.
Please note that you will be charged £10 for us to investigate a document if the job does not go ahead.
It is vital that your RIP is not too old to handle a PDF/X1-a file. If it is, let us know before we start the job the version of PDF that you require and we will produce one to the correct specification for your hardware and software.
In the very unlikely event that you cannot RIP the file correctly, but we can RIP it correctly here, then (in the nicest possible way) we will deem that to be your problem not ours, which you need to take up with your equipment suppliers. If, having spoken to them, you decide that you need a different version of PDF, we will create this for you, hopefully by adapting the PDF/X1-a on a chargeable studio time basis.
Please send the job to us by email, ISDN, via our FTP server, post or courier, preferably with some proofs. We will probably phone you to discuss the job and perhaps send you a proof. Once the Press Quality PDF is completed, we will send it to you by email or ISDN (charged at cost) or post it on a CD. Writing the CD and postage is free, but if you would like the CD sent to you via Royal Mail Special Delivery by
We use automatically fed, high speed document scanners. These scan both sides of an original at a single pass (known as duplex scanning) at speeds of up to 180 pages per minute
These scans can be saved directly to Adobe PDF files, or saved a .BMP, .JPG or .TIF files. Using OCR software the bitmap images can be converted to Microsoft Word files.
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One bit black and white - suitable for simple text and linework: |
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A4 simplex: 1.2p |
A4 duplex: 0.7p |
A3 simplex: 1.7p |
A3 duplex: 0.9p |
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256 level greyscale - suitable for documents which contain tints or photographs: |
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A4 simplex: 1.2p |
A4 duplex: 1.0p |
A3 simplex: 2.1p |
A3 duplex: 2.0p |
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24-bit colour- suitable for spot or full colour documents: |
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A4 simplex: 2.9p |
A4 duplex: 2.8p |
A3 simplex: 5.9p |
A3 duplex: 5.6p |
It is important that your original documents are sensibly organised and ready to scan. We allow half an hour set up and finalising time on each job. If you present your documents to us in a disorganised state and need us to sort them out before we can start scanning, this additional work will be chargeable.
There is a £30 set-up charge, plus a charge in pence per page.
We assume that you will deliver and collect your documents. If you would like us to arrange carriage, we would be pleased to give you a quote.
These prices are for scanning and saving the files as PDFs, BMPs, JPEGs or TIFFs at 300dpi. We would be very pleased to quote for any additional work which you may require to be done to the files, e.g. making the PDFs searchable, adding bookmarks or converting to Word documents.
Originals
The document scanners will automatically feed single leaves (which can be printed one side or both sides) up to a size which is considerably larger than A3 – 305mm x 432mm to be precise. The minimum width is smaller than a business card - 70mm 55mm.
In manual feed mode it is possible to scan a one sided original up to 1000mm in length.
For automatic feeding, material must be within the weight and thickness range of 52gsm / 60 microns up to 128gsm / 150 microns. Manual feeding enables a wider range from 42gsm / 50 microns up to 255gsm / 300 microns.
Speed and Scan Modes
Documents can be scanned at 100dpi, 150dpi, 200dpi, 240dpi, 300dpi, 400dpi or 600dpi. In addition to binary black and white scanning, we can also scan at the same very fast speed (180 pages per minute) in 256-level greyscale mode for documents which contain black and white tonal images such as shaded diagrams or photographs. Scanning in 24-bit colour mode (producing 16.7 million distinct colours) for documents which contain colour photographs, is slower.
We can convert the scanned pages to PDF files of various types, tailored to meet your requirements.
We can use OCR (optical character recognition) to convert the scans to text and supply you with Word documents which closely resemble the original scanned pages.
PDFs can be made navigable. This means that if you select a page reference in the Index or Contents, the cursor will jump to that page. Phrases and keywords throughout the document can be searched and cross references can lead you automatically from one point in the document to another.
We can optimise the PDF; this will give the minimum possible file size whilst making sure that the best possible image quality is retained when viewed on a monitor. We charge £3 per page for this service, with a minimum charge of £30 per job.
Our PDFs fall into two categories – those which are going to be used as origination files for digital or litho printing (which we call either our Basic or our Press Quality PDFs) and those which are going to be used as electronic documents (for emailing, supplying on CD or downloading from the Internet).
We offer two qualities; one is very basic, the other is an absolutely luxurious PDF/x-1a file. Both of these qualities are charged on a “per page per document” basis but at different rates and with different minimum charges. If you ask us to do more work than is already included in the two standard prices, extra studio time charges will apply.
The principle benefit of converting documents into PDF files is that they retain their formatting, i.e. they look right when viewed on any computer which has the freely downloadable Adobe Acrobat Reader (now simply called Adobe Reader) installed. Adobe Reader is not just available for MACs and PCs, but also for many handheld computers and PDAs - and even some mobile phones!
PDF files typically contain product manuals, brochures, magazine articles, etc. Their pages can be zoomed in or out and include interactive elements such as buttons for forms entry and for triggering sound and Quicktime or AVI movies.
We can prioritise the text within the pages enabling it to be read aloud in the correct order by Adobe Reader
Once we have created a PDF, we can add fields which enable a recipient of the file to add text or numbers into fillable boxes. These fields can perform calculations within the PDF, adding and multiplying numbers in a similar way to a spreadsheet. The file can then be printed by the person who has filled it in, or the form can be automatically emailed back to an embedded email address. Fillable PDFs are ideal for downloadable or emailable application forms. The file can then be printed by the person who has filled it in, or the form can be automatically emailed back to an embedded email address. Fillable PDFs are ideal for downloadable or emailable application forms.