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• • August 5, 2014 at 11:40 am #69897
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Forgive the slightly rant-y tone, but this is a frustrating issue for me.

    I am currently working on a product catalog, to be printed on US letter size paper, but printed out of country (Asia), and shipped to the US. I started my file with measurements in inches, my thinking being that final output is going to be in inches, so I might as well work in inches. My bosses, who don’t do any graphics work, want me to work in mm because our printer is in Asia.

    Now please tell me I’m not crazy in thinking that this doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, we are going to specify the paper size, and send them a pdf. At what point will our printer need to have a file where elements are measured in mm? It’s as simple as changing the rulers. I’ve already laid out several pages and to go through and change a design element to be a specific measurement in mm is going to be tedious, time-consuming, and generally make no difference.

    Anyway, just needed to let it out. Clients…

  • August 5, 2014 at 11:57 am #69898
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Well – hmmm – it doesn’t make a difference but there could be a slight rounding off with InDesign.

    1mm is exactly 0.0393700787402 inches.

    And 1 inch is exactly 25.399999999972568 mm

    In the grand scheme of things – it doesn’t make a difference.

    But for clarity – no matter where in the world I’m sending to I work in mm and never anything else. I’ve stopped working in picas and points about 10 years ago as nobody else outside of printing knew what it meant.

  • August 5, 2014 at 3:45 pm #69904
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    There is zero reason to spec anything in mm or picas or inches or anything else… that is to say, whatever you spec it in will translate to any other setting. Just right-click the little square where the two rulers touch in the upper left corner of the document window and pick a different setting.

    When you say they want you to spec “elements” in mm, do you mean they want text frames to be 76 mm instead of 3 inches? That does seem rather weird.

  • August 6, 2014 at 1:41 am #69908
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    That would be 2.99213 inches :)

  • August 6, 2014 at 3:42 pm #69927
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    I’ve had a similar problem when working on a file from someone else (usually the UK). The job is done in mm and I’m using inches for the trim size and head margins, inside margins, gutters, etc. So instead of (for example) 6.5 x 8.25, it comes up something like 6.4231 x 8.21807 (just an example)

    Well–the printers say we have to fix that and it has to be 6.5 x 8.25. And all the margins don’t measure correctly, either. So that means I have to go in and adjust everything. And nine times out of ten, the folks in the UK haven’t done their master pages correctly (i.e., basing them on others), so I have to do each master page.

    Don’t get me going on the UK files I have to fix where NO style sheets were written. Everything is “basic” and styled by hand. Kinda hard to make the InDesign file ePub ready. Apologies for drifting off topic there.

  • August 6, 2014 at 3:56 pm #69928
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Can you explain why the printers would care where the margins are? As long as the page size is correct, and the text falls inside the printable area, why would the printers even measure that?

    • August 7, 2014 at 3:57 am #69943
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      So far as I know, the printers have always cared about margins, gutters, etc when it comes to book publishing.

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