How to prepare print files for South African printers.

What file format SA printers actually want

PDF, with fonts converted to curves. That’s the safe answer for almost every job in South Africa, and it’s the format that gives printers the fewest reasons to send it back.

You can send native files too — AI, EPS, CDR, INDD — but you’re betting on the printer having the same software and the same fonts you do. That bet doesn’t always pay off. PDFs flatten all of that into something every printer can open without surprises.

Some shops will accept JPG or PNG for simple jobs like flyers or social-style prints. They’ll usually warn you that quality depends entirely on the source. JPGs are also lossy and compress repeatedly each time they’re saved, so for anything you might need to reprint or modify, PDF is still the better default.

The Corel Draw vs Adobe problem

Here’s something most international print guides won’t tell you. Most South African printers run Corel Draw. Most South African designers work in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign. Those two worlds don’t always talk to each other cleanly.

An Illustrator AI file opened in Corel Draw can shift text, lose effects, change spacing, or drop entire layers. Same in the other direction. Even modern Corel versions that claim Adobe compatibility have quirks.

This is the single biggest reason to default to PDF with fonts converted to curves. A PDF is a finished, locked-in document. It doesn’t care which software opens it. The printer sees what you saw.

How to set up bleed

Bleed is extra image area beyond the final cut line. It exists because cutting machines aren’t perfectly accurate, and because paper shifts slightly under heat and pressure during printing. Without bleed, you get thin white strips along the edges where your design should have run to the paper’s edge.

The rule is simple. If you need a 400mm × 300mm print, design it at 405mm × 305mm. The extra 2.5mm on each side is bleed. Anything that should reach the edge of the finished piece must extend into that bleed area. Anything that shouldn’t get cut off — text, logos, important details — should stay at least 3mm inside the cut line.

Most SA printers ask for 3–5mm of bleed depending on the product. Large-format banners and posters often want more. Business cardsand flyers usually need less. When in doubt, ask the printer what they want before you start, not after you’ve finished the design.

CMYK vs RGB: the honest answer

Standard advice says always work in CMYK because printers print in CMYK. The reality is more nuanced. Most printer RIP software (the software that processes your file before printing) converts between RGB and CMYK automatically, and for most jobs you won’t see a meaningful difference either way.

That said, customers consistently get surprised by colour mismatches. They design something on a backlit monitor in RGB, and the printed CMYK version comes out duller. That’s not a CMYK failure — it’s the physics of reflected light versus emitted light. No print will ever look exactly like a screen.

If colour accuracy matters — brand colours, photography that needs to look exactly right, products where the customer will be picky — do two things. First, ask the printer what colour mode their machine expects. Send the file in that mode. Second, ask for a sample print before committing to the full run. A printed sample tells you what you’re actually getting. A screen never will.

For everyday flyers, business cards and general signage, just save your PDF and let the printer’s system handle the conversion. The result will be fine.

Resolution and DPI: when 300 is enough

The standard answer is 300 DPI. It’s right most of the time, but it needs context.

The number itself doesn’t fix anything. If you take a low-resolution image — say a 10 DPI logo grabbed off a website — and tell your design software to save it at 300 DPI, the image will still look terrible. The software can’t invent detail that wasn’t there. It just adds pixels and smears the existing ones.

What you want is either a vector source (logos and illustrations that can scale infinitely without quality loss) or a raster image that was captured or created at high enough resolution to begin with. If the original artwork is vector or already 300 DPI at the final print size, saving the file as 300 DPI will give you a clean print.

For very large prints — big banners, building wraps, vehicle decals— you sometimes want more than 300 DPI, particularly for high-detail photography. But there’s a ceiling. Even if your printer advertises 1440 DPI capability, doubling your file’s resolution past a certain point produces no visible improvement. It just makes the file larger and slower to process.

Practical rule: 300 DPI for anything held close (cards, flyers, brochures). 150–200 DPI is often acceptable for large banners that will only be seen from metres away. Vector graphics wherever possible.

Why fonts must be converted to curves

Convert your fonts to curves. Every time. No exceptions.

When fonts are still “live” in a file, the software opening that file needs the same font installed locally to render it correctly. If the printer doesn’t have your font — and they often don’t, especially for paid or unusual fonts — their software will substitute a default. Your carefully chosen typography becomes Arial. Your spacing falls apart. Your headlines wrap differently.

Converting to curves (sometimes called “outlining” or “creating outlines”) turns each letter from a font character into a vector shape. The text is no longer text — it’s a series of curves and lines that will print identically regardless of which fonts the printer has installed.

The trade-off: once converted, the text can’t be edited. Keep an editable master file with live fonts for any future changes, and convert only the version you send to print.

In Adobe Illustrator: select text, then Type → Create Outlines. In Corel Draw: select text, then Arrange → Convert to Curves (or Ctrl+Q). In Canva: download as PDF Print with the “Flatten PDF” option which embeds fonts.

Colour profiles and the SA reality

International guides will tell you to use FOGRA39 for European-style work, US Web Coated SWOP for North America, ISO Coated for general commercial printing. South Africa doesn’t really have a standard.

Each printer calibrates to their own machines. Their RIP software has its own profiles. Some shops follow international standards, some don’t bother and trust their visual judgement. There’s no universal answer that will make every SA printer happy.

Practical approach: if you’re particular about colour, ask the printer what profile they want. If you’re not, save in a generic CMYK profile (or RGB if they accept it) and let their workflow handle the conversion. The difference for most jobs is invisible.

Pantones: mostly a waste of time

This is going to be unpopular with brand managers, but it’s honest. For most digital and large-format printing in South Africa, specifying Pantone colours in your file does not give you a Pantone-accurate result.

The reason: most digital printers and wide-format machines use CMYK process inks (sometimes plus light cyan, light magenta, orange or green for extended gamut). They simulate Pantone colours using combinations of those process inks. The simulation is often close, sometimes good, rarely exact.

True Pantone accuracy needs actual Pantone spot inks running on an offset litho press. That’s mostly available in commercial print houses for high-volume work, not the average digital print or banner shop.

The one case where Pantones matter for non-litho work: when you’re printing onto pigmented cut vinyl that’s already supplied in Pantone colours, and you need printed elements to match the vinyl. In that case, you might use Pantone references in your file to help the printer get as close as possible. Even then, ask for a test before the full run.

For everything else, build your design in CMYK using colours you’ve verified with a test print. That’s the only reliable way to know what you’re going to get.

What actually goes wrong

After thousands of print jobs across SA print shops, the same problems come up over and over. They’re almost all avoidable.

Small images blown up too large

The most common file disaster. A small logo or photo, taken from a website or pulled off WhatsApp, gets stretched to fill a banner or poster. The result is visibly pixelated when printed. The printer can’t fix this — no software can invent detail that doesn’t exist in the source.

Fonts not converted to curves

Second most common. Designer uses a paid or unusual font. Printer’s system doesn’t have it. Software substitutes Arial or Times New Roman. Job arrives looking nothing like what was approved.

Sizing forgotten

Customer needs a print at exactly a certain size for a frame, vehicle door or sign panel, but forgets to add bleed or shrinkage allowance. Print comes out the wrong size after trimming. Or paper shrinks slightly through the press and the design ends up off-centre.

Colour shock

File looks one way on screen, prints another way on paper. Almost always because no test print was done before the full run. Vibrant screen-only colours (especially pure reds, bright greens, neon blues) don’t exist in the CMYK gamut and come out muted.

Long-banner shrinkage

On very long banners and roll prints, vinyl can shrink slightly during printing — especially solvent prints. A 6-metre banner can end up 5.97m. Usually not a problem visually, but if you’ve given exact mounting dimensions to an installer, the shortfall matters.

What to do if you don’t have a designer

Two realistic options.

Hire a designer for the job.Many South African freelance designers will design a flyer or business card from R350–R1,500 depending on complexity. They’ll deliver a print-ready file the printer will accept without questions. Worth it for anything important or anything you’ll be reprinting often.

Use Canva, properly.Canva has become genuinely capable for basic print work. The free version covers most needs. The trick is using it correctly: pick a template that’s set up for your final size, add bleed (Canva supports this in print templates), download as “PDF Print”, and tick the “Flatten PDF” option to lock the fonts. Tell the printer you used Canva so they know what to check.

Some printers also offer in-house design as part of the quote. Ask. It’s often cheaper than hiring a freelance designer separately, particularly for simple work where you mostly need someone to set up the file correctly.

The pre-flight checklist

Before you send any file to a printer, run through this list. It catches most of the problems above.

If anything on this list is unclear, ask the printer before you finalise the file. Printers don’t expect customers to be experts. What they appreciate is being asked the right questions early, rather than fixing a problem after it’s been printed.