Royal Comics Syndicate selects comics for distribution from top professionals and ensures high technical and artistic standards - while leaving the artists room to breathe.

Price is determined by publication frequency and circulation. Contact us for a low-price quote. Invoicing occurs after delivery of each batch - terms of payment are either prepayment or credit payment. Credit payment is only available in Finland, and only for those customers who have received a positive credit decision from us. For orders from outside Finland, prepayment is always required.

Prepayment means that the customer receives the material after paying the invoice. Credit payment means that the customer pays the bill after delivery of the material. This should not be confused with payment by credit card, which is one of the payment methods we accept when paying from outside of Finland.

The comics are located on our high-performance server, which will be updated as necessary for increased loads. At pre-arranged intervals you will receive links via email so you can download the publication material quickly and easily.

Delivery batch example. You can download files from the above link and use them for testing.

We have text and image material available if you would like to put together a news story presenting a comic and its authors.

Royal Comics Syndicate comics are not only enjoyable because of their content, but also due to their first-class visual appearance. Maintaining high print quality is a point of honor for us. The resolution of our comics files is high, and they duplicate well in both magazine and newspaper printing.

Line drawings Black and white line drawings (i.e. inking) are 1-bit image files (aka bitmap/lineart/monochrome) with 900-1200 dpi resolution and assumed publication width 7.323 inches (18.6 cm).

Coloring and color management The coloring files for the comics in our system are in the RGB color space. They are converted before delivery to the customer to the appropriate CMYK/GRAY/RGB color space. Coloring files have a resolution of 300 dpi. We are able to serve the printing processes in different countries because the colors of our PDF files are converted using the customer’s own color profile, either a continent-wide generic CMYK profile or, if necessary, even a custom profile made just for a specific printing press. The customer can also choose to receive the coloring in RGB mode and do a custom CMYK conversion.

File Formats The comics are stored in our system as TIFF files (photographs or photograph-like JPEG files). Files delivered to customers for printing are generally delivered as PDF files with inking and color combined.

In order not to leave anything to chance, we check the resolution and color spaces of image files intended for printing before delivery to the publication and also track print quality of the comics in the printed publication.

The work of scanning comics has increasingly shifted from repro houses to the desktop. It has been sad to watch changes in print quality from the 1980s to the 2010s. The transition from repros to the desktop has given rise to previously unknown problems . Nowadays we see printing products (especially newspaper comics pages) with images suffering from the following problems almost daily:

Pixelation means that the resolution of the inking is so low that pixels can be detected in the printing product with the naked eye. Increasing the resolution of inking removes the pixelation problem.

Dithering means that the inking is dithered even though the purpose had only been to dither the coloring. Dithering can be prevented by combining inking and coloring in a PDF file so the inking file remains 1-bit.

CMYK color misalignments result from the printing process, from the paper moving or mechanical parts shifting, and it always happens to some degree. How much these alignment problems stick out is greatly affected by whether the black has been marked for overprinting or not.

To ensure a high level of printing quality on our part, we collect inking and coloring from the authors as separate TIFF files, review the material visually, and check resolutions and color spaces. We always do color conversions and file formatting using the same formula, minimizing the possibility for human error. This approach ensures that the PDF file is visually and technically valid.

Further down on this page, (here and here), you will find test material which can be used to evaluate how our PDF files will work in your publishing system and how colors will be reproduced. The test material is available for newspaper printing, and there are two color profiles available to choose from (ISOnewspaper30v4 for the United States and ISOnewspaper26v4 for the rest of the world except Japan and India). These two sets of test material can be used for other printing methods and areas as well, with the proviso that the colors may not be optimally reproduced. Please note that we can convert the material into any of the most common color profiles (see this list), and the actual material delivered to clients for printing is top quality in terms of color management, regardless of printing method, paper quality, or which continent’s printing inks are used.