Which questions to ask to a printer before preparing your material

Hello Everybody, I'd like to print some postcards with indesign.

I'm new to printing, and it is very complicated, there are a lot of factors to considerate.

If I want to find a good printer, what are the most important questions that I need to ask ?

In advance many thanks !

One thing YOU need to know, because the commercial postcard printer may not understand (unless he is a photographer, on the side) is the fact that
the standard lithographic 'offset' printer is limited in dynamic range to printing about a 5EV range of brightnesses, so if your photo has any wider DR than that, some details WILL GET LOST in printing the photo to a postcard!

Ok thanks to let me know this.

I benchmarked some printers in my city, but I live in Colombia and unfortunately printers don't have high end machines around here. Despite I heard that CMYK is not the best solution, I think I have no other options.

Now My goal is to get the best information possible in order to prepare my files and get the best prints as possible

If you have any idea you are welcomed.

Tristan I don't know which of your three threads on this topic was first, but It would have probably been better to ask the additional questions in subsequent posts to the first thread. It saves people having three different places to see all of the questions you aksed, and is more likely to get you suitable answers, based on all of the info that has been shared on the subject already.

Do not be surprised if the mods combine all of the threads into one.

Oh have a look in the other threads for my answers to your actual question. With one thread, with multiple question posts, I would have only needed one post to do this, not three.

Alan