The Final Check: What to Review Before Sending to Print

This is the moment where good intentions meet reality. You have planned your flyer with ChatGPT. You have designed it in Canva with proper prompts. You have set up bleed, kept content in the safe area, given the design breathing room, and checked your image quality.

Now comes the bit that separates print you will be proud of from print that costs you time, money, and a chunk of your professional reputation.

The final check.

Print Lord does this check on every single file that comes through our doors, because we know what happens when it gets skipped. Files get rejected by printers. Jobs get delayed. Colours shift. Text gets cut off. Brands get damaged.

This is not about perfectionism. This is about protecting yourself from entirely preventable disasters. And while Print Lord will always catch these issues for you, understanding what we are looking for means you can catch problems early, ask better questions, and feel confident about what you are sending.

Let’s walk through the ultimate pre-flight checklist, step by step.

File Type: PDF Print, Always

First question, every time: what file format are you sending?

If the answer is anything other than PDF Print, stop. Go back to Canva. Export again.

PNG files lose resolution. JPG files compress badly and strip out important data. Standard PDFs might not include bleed or crop marks. PDF Print is the professional standard because it preserves everything your printer needs: vector graphics, high resolution images, bleed, crop marks, and accurate colour information.

Print Lord has received thousands of files over two decades. The ones that cause problems are almost never PDF Print. The ones that sail through without a hitch almost always are.

This is not negotiable. PDF Print, always.

Export Settings: Tick the Right Boxes

Exporting as PDF Print is not enough on its own. You need to make sure the right settings are ticked in Canva before you hit download.

Here is what Print Lord looks for:

Crop marks: Yes. These show the printer exactly where to trim your design.

Bleed: Yes. This ensures your background extends beyond the trim edge so you do not end up with white borders.

Flatten PDF: Usually yes. This merges all layers into a single, stable file that prints consistently.

These boxes exist for a reason. They are not optional extras. They are the difference between a file that prints correctly and a file that gets rejected or, worse, prints badly.

If you are not sure which boxes to tick, ask. Print Lord is happy to guide you. But do not guess and hope for the best. Hope is not a print strategy.

Size: Exact Dimensions Matter

Your file needs to be the exact size you ordered. Not close. Not roughly right. Exact.

A6 is 105mm x 148mm. A5 is 148mm x 210mm. A4 is 210mm x 297mm. These are standards, not suggestions.

Print Lord works in millimetres, as do all professional printers. If your Canva file is set to 105.5mm x 148.2mm because you eyeballed it, your printer will either reject the file or resize it, and resizing almost always introduces problems.

Before you export, check your document dimensions in Canva. Make sure they match the print size you need, exactly. If you are adding bleed, make sure you understand how that affects the total document size. Standard bleed is 3mm on all sides, so an A6 flyer with bleed becomes 111mm x 154mm.

Get this wrong and you are looking at delays, reprints, or a product that does not fit where it is supposed to go. Get it right and everything else gets easier.

Colour Mode: Understand the Shift from Screen to Print

This is where we need a light touch, because colour science can get complicated fast. But here is what you need to know.

Your screen displays colours in RGB, which uses light. Your printer uses CMYK, which uses ink. The two do not match perfectly, and some colours shift when they move from screen to print.

Bright, saturated colours often look duller in print. Neon shades cannot be reproduced in standard CMYK. Deep blacks might need extra ink to look truly black.

Print Lord handles colour conversion professionally, and we will flag any issues before your job goes to press. But you should know that what you see on your laptop is not always what you will get in your hand.

This is not a flaw in the process. It is physics. If colour accuracy is critical to your brand, talk to us early. We can advise on Pantone matching, colour proofs, and other options that get you closer to what you need.

But do not expect your print to look exactly like your screen. It will not, and that is normal.

The Final Visual Check: Look With Fresh Eyes

You have checked the technical settings. Now check the content.

Look at your design as if you have never seen it before. Imagine you are your customer, holding this flyer or poster in your hand. Does it make sense? Is the message clear? Is the call to action obvious?

Check for:

Spelling and grammar: Typos are permanent in print. There is no edit button once it is on paper.

Contact details: Phone numbers, email addresses, website URLs. Are they correct? Are they up to date? Print Lord has seen countless jobs with outdated contact information that had to be scrapped.

Dates and times: Double check event details, opening hours, deadlines. A wrong date makes the entire print run useless.

Image quality at actual size: Zoom in. Do your images still look sharp? Or are they starting to pixelate? If they look dodgy on screen, they will look worse in print.

Hierarchy and readability: Does your eye move naturally from headline to body to call to action? Or is everything fighting for attention?

This is the unglamorous bit. It is also the bit that saves you from disaster. Print Lord checks all of this for every client, but you should check it first.

What Print Lord Checks That You Might Miss

Even with the best intentions, there are technical details most people will not spot. That is where Print Lord earns our keep.

We check:

Colour accuracy across the document: Are your brand colours consistent? Or has something shifted between pages?

Image resolution at print size: Your image might be 300dpi, but is it 300dpi at the size it is being printed? Stretching a small image makes it low resolution.

Font embedding: Are all your fonts embedded in the PDF? If not, the printer might substitute them, and your design will look wrong.

Bleed consistency: Does your bleed extend evenly on all sides? Or is there a gap somewhere that will cause problems?

Safe area compliance: Is all your important content safely inside the margins? Or is something creeping too close to the trim edge?

These are not things you can eyeball. They require experience, technical knowledge, and a checklist built over two decades of catching mistakes before they become expensive problems.

Print Lord does this check on every file, whether you ask us to or not. It is part of our promise to you. But understanding what we are looking for helps you spot potential issues early and ask better questions.

Your Pre-Flight Checklist (Save This)

Before you send any file to print, run through this:

File type: PDF Print? Yes.

Export settings: Crop marks, bleed, flatten PDF all ticked? Yes.

Dimensions: Exact size for your print format? Yes.

Colour mode: Aware that colours may shift from screen to print? Yes.

Spelling and grammar: Double checked? Yes.

Contact details and dates: Correct and current? Yes.

Image quality: Sharp at actual print size? Yes.

Hierarchy and readability: Clear and logical? Yes.

If you can answer yes to all of those, you are in good shape. If any of them make you pause, stop and fix it now. Do not hope it will be fine. It will not be.

When to Ask for Help

You can do a lot yourself with the knowledge from this month. You can plan properly, design smartly, apply technical fundamentals, and export correctly.

But you are not expected to be a print expert. That is Print Lord’s job.

If you are unsure about anything, ask before you print. If something does not look quite right, flag it early. If you are working to a tight deadline and need expert eyes on your file, that is exactly what we are here for.

Print Lord reviews files as part of our standard service. We do not charge extra to catch mistakes, suggest improvements, or make sure your brand is protected. We do it because that is what being a trusted print partner means.

You are not bothering us by asking questions. You are giving us the chance to do our job properly, which is guarding your brand as if it were our own.

Screen Perfect Does Not Mean Print Ready

Here is the truth that saves you heartbreak: just because your design looks perfect on your laptop does not mean it is ready for print.

Colours shift. Text shrinks. Details you could see on screen disappear on paper. Spacing that looked fine at 100% zoom feels cramped at actual size.

The design is not finished when it looks good on screen. It is finished when it has passed every technical check, been reviewed by experienced eyes, and confirmed as genuinely print ready.

Print Lord sees the gap between screen perfect and print ready every single day. Closing that gap is what we do, and it is why clients trust us with jobs that matter.

What Happens Next

You have spent April learning how to use Canva and ChatGPT properly. You know how to plan before you design. You know how to write better prompts. You understand bleed, margins, white space, and image quality. You know how to export correctly.

Now you know how to do the final check before sending to print.

This is not wasted knowledge. This is the process that separates businesses who look professional from businesses who look amateurish. This is what saves you time, money, and reputation.

And when you are ready to make it real, Print Lord is here. We check what you have learned to check. We catch what you might miss. We advise, guide, and deliver print that is on brand and on time, every single time.

No disasters. No drama. No faff. Just print that works, delivered by people who care about your brand as much as you do.

Ready to put everything you have learned into practice? Get in touch with Print Lord. We will make sure it is done right.

On brand. On time. That is the Print Lord promise.