Artwork Specifications

Design Review and Artwork help
All orders are reviewed to ensure the best possible reproduction of your design. If we detect any issues or need to correct anything we will try to contact you within 24 hours to resolve any problems and avoid any delays in processing your order.

If you have questions regarding formatting, resolution, cropping, or just want help getting started, we’re also just a phone call away.

Our Customer Care Team can:

  • Walk you through the upload process
  • Help you place your image on any product
  • Check your image resolution and confirm it will print clearly
  • Adjust the image size or cropping
  • Resolve any other upload questions you have

We want to make the design process as effortless as possible and we are here to help.

What kind of file formats do you support for uploads?
Brand Store by Vistaprint supports a variety of file formats for uploaded designs:

Adobe Photoshop Image (.psd)
Adobe Acrobat Document (.pdf)
Adobe Illustrator Document (.ai)
Bitmap Image (.bmp)
GIF Image (.gif)
JPEG Image (.jpg,.jpeg)
Microsoft Word Document (.doc,.docx)
Microsoft PowerPoint Document (.ppt)
Microsoft Publisher Document (.pub)
PCX Image Document (.pcx)
PICT Image (.pic)
PNG Image (.png)
PostScript File (.ps)
TIF Image (.tif,.tiff)
Windows Enhanced Metafile (.emf)
Windows Metafile (*.wmf)

What is "resolution"? Which resolution should my image / photo be in for uploading?
Resolution refers to the number of dots per inch (dpi), or the amount of detail the image has. Higher resolution means a more detailed image, but also a larger file and a longer upload time. For best results with most products, your image or photo should be 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final print dimensions. Simply increasing the DPI setting in a graphic program does not improve the resolution.

We want you to love the products you order from Brand Store by Vistaprint. If you are worried about how your uploaded artwork will come out, give us a call and we'll take a look.

What's the difference between CMYK and RGB?
Good question. These terms are thrown around a lot in the printing and graphics world, and it is important to understand the difference. CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and "Key," or black) are the ink colours used during the printing process. The term "key" is used instead of "black" because, really, this is a mixture of the cyan, magenta, and yellow inks; the resulting "black" can be minutely different from one printing company to another. RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) are the colours of light used by your monitor to display your document on-screen. Black is not listed because on-screen black is an absence of light. A mixture of red, green, and blue light produces white.

How does this affect me?
Any image you create on your computer should be created in CMYK mode. This will ensure that the colours you see on-screen will most closely match the final printed product. If you create your document in RGB, the colours in your printed product may vary slightly: many of the bright values produced by your monitor cannot be exactly reproduced in print.
A lot of digital images are JPEG files, and JPEGs are almost always in RGB.

Why do certain colours look different after they print?
There's nothing more upsetting than designing a product online, only to receive it and discover the colours aren't quite as you'd imagined. At Brand Store by Vistaprint, we understand.

Rest assured, we own a state-of-the-art printing facility that matches on-screen colours (RGB) to printed colours (CMYK) as closely as possible. We also have high quality controls and colour correction standards in place to ensure there is as little variation as possible, especially within a single product order.

We want you to be 100% satisfied with your order. If you're not, contact us and we'll put it right.