Our preferred formats are: flattened or layered PSD, TIFF, JPEG, EPS or PDF files created in Photoshop. We've found these formats are very color stable (with the use of profiles), and have the lowest chance of encountering problems (missing fonts, corrupted fonts, live effects, etc.).

We also have the ability to accommodate a wide range of industry software, and can currently process files from the following programs. Click the headings below to see the best saving practices for each program.

Adobe Photoshop

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Photoshop is our preferred graphics software. If you use one of our Photoshop templates, you can flatten the image or leave it in layers. Use PSD, PDF, TIFF or JPG format when saving. If JPG compression is used, do not set the quality setting below 9.

Adobe Illustrator

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When using Adobe Illustrator, convert your text to outlines, include all linked graphics and save in PDF format. You may down sample all images to 300ppi and use JPG compression of "high" (9) or higher.

Adobe InDesign

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When using InDesign to prepare your artwork, it's best to export to PDF. There is a full description of this process in the How To section under PDF from InDesign.

Adobe Acrobat

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A PDF can be generated from a wide variety of graphics software today. If you are using graphic software not listed here, it's a good idea to save your artwork as a PDF before submission to Lamar Graphics. This can be done through several conversion programs such as Cute PDF or through the "print to file" or "print to PDF" option if you have Adobe Acrobat installed.

Quark Express

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Although we can process native Quark files, we strongly recommend exporting your Quark documents as PDFs. There is a full explanation of this process in the How To section of this site under Quark to PDF.

Corel Draw

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We no longer support Corel Draw files created in Version 12 or higher. Please publish your Corel Draw documents as PDFs or save down to version 11 or lower. When publishing to the PDF format, be sure to convert your fonts to curves, use JPG compression quality settings of 9 or higher and do not down sample any image lower than 300ppi.

* When working in formats not listed, your artwork should be saved as a Production Quality .PDF, .EPS or .TIFF.

Fonts

Whether or not we need the fonts you used will depend entirely on how the file is set up. No matter what program is used to design the file, it will be converted to a Photoshop Document and placed into one of our Photoshop Templates for production.

If you use one of our Photoshop templates,
we do not require the fonts used in the design*.

Photoshop embeds a pixel based replica of the fonts used, so even if we don't have the fonts used, Photoshop will use this pixel information to render the font correctly in production.

If Quark or InDesign is used, the next best thing is to provide us with a PDF file with the fonts embedded. Check out the "How To" section of this site more more details on saving out Production Ready PDFs from various programs.

If another program is used (Illustrator, Freehand, Corel, etc.) it's a good idea to convert all fonts to outlines, embed or include the fonts used in a design.

If you are submitting one size design that will have to be resized into multiple different sizes, please include the fonts with your art upload or CD.

*This is assuming the submitted art does not contain any misspellings and does not require copy changes after submission.