Camera-ready artwork, in plain terms
Your printer asked for camera-ready art and rejected what you sent. It is almost never about how good your logo looks. It is about what kind of file it is.
Camera-ready means vector: a file made of paths a machine can follow, not pixels. A press separates colours from paths. A cutter follows paths. An embroidery machine plans stitches along paths. Pixels give it nothing to work with, however many of them there are.
The checklist your shop is running
- Vector artwork: .ai, .eps, .svg, or a PDF that still contains live vector paths
- Built at the size it will be reproduced, or scalable to it without loss
- Text converted to outlines, so the shop does not need your font
- Colours specified the way the process needs them — spot or Pantone for screen print, not screen RGB
- Clean, closed paths with no stray points left over from a trace
- PNG, GIF and JPG — raster formats, no matter how large the file is
- A logo pulled off a website, typically 200-600px wide
- Word, Publisher, PowerPoint or Canva exports
- A screenshot of a logo, even a sharp one
- A photo of a printed sample, a patch, or a business card
- A PDF that only contains a placed raster image
Rebuilding a logo properly takes 25 to 40 minutes of skilled work. Published art charges commonly sit around $50 an hour, billed in 15-minute increments, and standalone vector conversion services typically run $15 to $60 a file. The shop is not being difficult: they are quoting labour they would otherwise absorb on every order.
Rates observed across published shop and service pricing, checked August 2026. Every shop sets its own — ask yours.
Turning a rejected file into a usable one
If your logo is reasonably clean — flat colours, defined edges, no photographic detail — an automatic conversion will normally produce a file your shop can use. Upload it, look at the result, and only send it on if it holds up. It costs nothing to check.
When it will not be enough: a hand-drawn sketch, a photo of an embroidered patch taken at an angle, a mark with fine photographic texture. Those need a person to interpret what the logo is meant to be, and no automatic tool decides that for you. Pay the art charge on those and keep it for the ones that need it.
Questions people actually ask
It is a term inherited from pre-press: artwork that is technically ready to go to press with no further work. In practice today, for screen printing, embroidery, engraving and promotional products, it means a vector file with live paths, built or scalable to the final reproduction size.
Sharp on a screen and reproducible on a press are different problems. A screen shows about 72 to 96 pixels per inch; print needs 300 at final size, and screen printing needs actual paths to cut a stencil from. A crisp 600px PNG is still 600px when it reaches the press.
When your file is not camera-ready, someone at the shop has to rebuild it. Published rates are commonly around $50 an hour, often billed in 15-minute increments, and per-file vector conversion services typically run $15 to $60 depending on complexity. Figures checked August 2026; every shop sets its own, so ask yours.
No. Size is not the issue, type is. Enlarging a raster image adds pixels, not paths. The shop still cannot separate colours, generate a cut line, or plan a stitch from it.
Common, and usually not your fault: whoever designed the logo kept the source, or the business changed hands. Either someone redraws it, or you run it through an automatic conversion and check the result. For a reasonably clean logo the automatic route is normally enough. For a sketch or a photo of a sample, a person still wins.
Open it and try to select a single shape. If you can select and move an individual path, it is vector. If you only ever select a rectangle containing the whole image, it is raster. You can also convert it here and compare the two side by side before you send anything.
If artwork prep for customers is your business, you are probably paying per file.
An outside art service charges 6 to 26 dollars a logo and comes back the next day. Redrawing it yourself costs half an hour you could bill. A year here is $49 for 25 conversions every month, every machine format included, which works out cheaper than two outsourced logos.
Everything on this page stays free. This is only worth it if you do volume.