What s prepress and why do we have it
Many companies and indeed, ‘professionals’ have not a clue what prepress is. Photographers think it’s all about them, printers consider it a irrelevant the bit at the start of the print process, management think it’s the bit where the designers work.
The truth is it that pre press departments play a vital roll in most print business.
Prepress denotes the procedure of ensuring digital files correct and ready for printing. This encompasses all necessary steps to guarantee that a design, document, or image is properly formatted and optimized prior to being sent to the printing press. It represents the crucial phase that occurs before ink is applied to paper and serves as the final checklist before production. It identifies errors and confirms that the design is printed precisely as intended.
What Pre Press do
Prepress tasks differ based on the complexity of the file and the printing method employed. Flight checking now indicates that operators no longer need to manually verify each file. The advent of PDF technology almost ensures a flawless print job every time, provided that the designer adheres to fundamental guidelines. Below is a concise summary of typical errors in submitted files that a prepress operator should be vigilant about. Correct dimensions. Ensure that the file has been saved accurately.
- Review files to foresee and rectify any common issues that may hinder the document from printing as intended.
- Verify fonts to confirm they are embedded and will print correctly.
- Check for bleed requirements.
- Ascertain whether the job necessitates spot colour.
- Ensure graphics are in the appropriate format and convert RGB files to CMYK, which is the standard format for printing full-color documents on a printing press.
- Trapping and knockout. Adjust the trapping, which involves overlapping certain colors to avoid gaps where colors meet in a layout.
- Establish the imposition of the file. In the case of brochures and magazines this means arranging pages in the correct sequence for printing. It is typical to print four, eight, 16, or even more pages on a single large sheet of paper that is subsequently trimmed and sometimes folded into a single unit.
- Generate color digital or soft proofs as requested.
- Confirm with customer to go to print or make amendments to file.
What pre press don’t do
It is not the job of a Prepress department normally to check spelling, improve images or make tweaks. This is a responsibility of the person who supplied the files. More often than not those who send in Word files cause the biggest problems. We are finding that because Abobe products are overpriced and complicated many companies are switching the other programs, which again bring there own set of problems.
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