Getting started
Reading the preflight report
One estimate before the trace, then four figures and a layer line read back off the finished PDF rather than off the settings that made it. Here is what each of them means.
5 min read
The expensive failure in a print shop is finding out late. Everything on this page exists so the answer arrives before the job is quoted, or at worst before the sheet is loaded.
Before anything is traced
Effective resolution is pixels divided by finished size, and both are known the moment a file is chosen — so it is said immediately, for free. Under 50 dpi the screen says the file is softer than it would like. Under 30 it says it is too soft to print.
It goes further than a verdict. It states how many pixels a compliant file would need on that edge, how many this one has, and the largest size this artwork does clear at. "Send something better" starts a conversation; "we need at least 3071 px tall" ends one.
This first figure is an upper bound and is described as one everywhere it appears. It measures the whole canvas; the tracer measures the artwork inside it, which is never larger and is usually smaller. Promising the better number and delivering the worse one is the failure it exists to prevent.
After the trace: check before printing
Artwork
The finished artwork size, measured off where the artwork sits on the finished page. This is what drives the page size and the filename.
It is not the same measurement as the extent of the cut path, which on a file with detached spatter is narrower. The result line states that separately as the cut line size. They are two labels because they are two different measurements, and on some files they will not agree.
Page
Artwork plus 2 cm of clearance: 1 cm top and bottom, and the width rounded up to a whole centimetre so the filename stays an integer. Rounding up only ever widens the margin. Vertical clearance is always exactly 2.0 cm; horizontal ends up between 2.0 and 3.0.
So a page width that is not artwork plus exactly 2 cm is expected, not wrong. The result also reports the clearance at the tightest side, measured to the cut itself.
Resolution
This one is measured, not estimated — it is the resolution of the artwork the tracer actually worked on.
| dpi at size | Verdict | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 100+ | Good | Nothing is said. |
| 50–100 | Fine | Nothing is said. The spec calls 60–100 fine for large format and 50–60 acceptable but worth noting. |
| 30–50 | Flagged | A warning callout: acceptable for large format viewed at a distance, but worth flagging. |
| Under 30 | Argued with | A danger callout, and the button reads Download anyway. |
Under 30 dpi used to be a refusal — the file was not offered at all. The verdict has not changed and neither has the advice, which is to ask for a better source. What changed is who decides. The number describes the printed raster only; the cut path in the same PDF is vector and is exactly as accurate at 9 dpi as at 300, so an operator cutting stock that is already printed has a real use for a file the table calls a reject.
Paths
How many subpaths the cut is made of, and how many close. Every cut path closes — an open one is a blade that starts somewhere and stops somewhere, leaving the piece attached — so only a score line should ever be open.
Multiple components come out as multiple subpaths in one stroked path. Shapes that touch trace as one: two figures holding hands are a single connected component, and that is correct for cutting. Eight or more separate paths usually means specks are being picked up, or the artwork is breaking up against its background.
Layers
The line under the four tiles should read CutContour, Layer 1 — the cut above the artwork, as siblings, with a third layer for the score lines when a file has folds. Never one nested inside the other: a cut nested inside the artwork layer disappears the moment somebody switches Layer 1 off in Illustrator.
Two things the screen adds
Move a control after a successful run and the figures are marked not current — they describe the last run that worked, not the settings now on screen.
And under a millimetre slider, when the resolution is low enough to matter, the screen prints the value the tracer is really acting on. Every millimetre setting becomes a whole number of pixels of the traced artwork, and at a coarse resolution some of them round somewhere else: 0.1 mm at 96 dpi is a third of a pixel. Rather than describe a setting the file never got, the control says what it did.
Where the figures come from
Every number on this block is measured off the finished PDF, not off the settings that were used to make it. So the report cannot flatter a file it does not match: if it says the page is 21 by 32 cm, that is what is going to the cutter.
Which is also why it is worth reading rather than skipping. It is the only place a wrong finished size shows up before a sheet is loaded.
Try it on your own artwork
Upload a file and read the preflight before you quote.