Registration Targets
and Crop Marks

Use our templates, please.

All of our templates have the necessary registration and crop marks already built in.  So long as you don't delete, move or obscure them, you should be fine.

Registration Targets

When printing with multiple inks, you have to have some way of lining them up!  Registration targets, which look like crosshairs, are designed for this purpose.

It can be very difficult to line up film that is missing the registration targets; submitted film that is missing them may trigger a surcharge.  It is vital that the targets print on all plates.  A common beginner mistake is to create targets, and assign them the color "black," which looks the same as "registration" color on the computer monitor.  Unfortunately, the point of using registration color is that an element assigned that color will print on every plate.  If a target appears on the black film but not on any of the others, it doesn't help you at all in lining up the plates.

Lastly, there is a special registration target required for the disc - in addition to targets on each axis, there should be one located dead center. Once again, this target is in all of our disc templates - just don't mess with it and you'll be OK.

Crop Marks

Crop marks tell the printer where they should cut.  If they aren't there, the printer has to guess, which is bad.  It's conventional to indicate a crop with a solid line, and a fold or perforation with a dotted line.

Crop marks should be thin (.25 point is standard - don't use "hairline" for technical reasons) and should not extend all the way in.  The ends of the crop marks should be offset by 1/16-1/8".  In most templates (ours included) crop marks are assigned registration color, rather than black - just in case, for design reasons, black doesn't get printed.