Tips and Tricks

What are The Most Important Mailing Design Guidelines for USPS-Approved Direct Mail? To meet USPS-approved direct mailing design guidelines, your designs must keep all important text and images at least 1/16″ from the edges to avoid being trimmed. Address, return address and postage must be oriented parallel to the longest edge, with a 1″ × […]

Smartpress’ online printing services makes it easy to add bleeds and borders. Begin designing your artwork with a minimum safety bleed margin of 0.125″. If you add a border to your artwork…

There are many ways to create a PDF file, but not all of them work well for professional online printing. The way in which you create a PDF can dramatically alter the quality of your printing…

Cutting tolerance is the slight variation that occurs when online printing projects are cut down to size. Smartpress recommends a tolerance of 0.125″ for our online printing services, meaning the trim line can vary by up to 0.125″. Anything that comes within 0.125″ of the edge of the cut line could potentially be cut off. […]

When you print with Versions, you can create projects with different designs, patterns or images but the same quantity, paper, size, ink, finishing specs and shipping details. It’s a budget-friendly, time-saving feature of our online printing services. Design Ideas Versions Setup Ensure you have separate design files for each version of your online printing project. […]

What is PPI, DPI and Image Resolution? Why Does it Matter in the Print World? Understanding image resolution is key to high-quality online printing. This guide explains the differences between pixels, PPI (pixels per inch) and DPI (dots per inch) and why using high-resolution images (typically 300 DPI) is essential for sharp, professional print results. […]

Window Cling Installation Guide Installing your window clings doesn’t need to be difficult. Once you’ve created your design for online printing and received it, continue reading this article or watch this video to learn how to install window clings for brands and businesses: Before Installing Your Window Clings Before you begin, we recommend that you […]

Large File Uploads If your files are too large to upload for online printing or you are experiencing difficulty using our browser-based upload tool, you can utilize our FTP Service. Also know as File Transfer Protocol, it’s part of our convenient online printing services and can be used to upload files up to 2 GB […]