If you’ve worked with a printing company, you may have heard the term “prepress” at some point. Understanding this step in production development is vitally important to owners, purchasing agents, advertisers, designers, and other roles involved in the printing and materials production business.
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The prepress
Starting with definition, this term refers to the process of creating a print layout and all subsequent steps that lead to the final print project with the expected results. A digital prepress machine receives information electronically and converts the data that is ultimately used to get your files onto paper while on the press.
Using a complete prepress kit can be a huge time saver, especially if you have a professional graphic designer to produce designs in the correct format. Different file sizes, output needs, and file types can slow down the printing process, but using a proper prepress technique produces file output quickly and efficiently.
Fundamental aspects of the prepress
At the moment that a user sends the files with the art to a printing company for production, the prepress phase has begun, the ideal is to achieve that the project at the end reflects their hard work in the design process, so A trained staff must always be used and willing to meet the needs in the results expected by the client, combining an electronic workflow with high-speed digital prepress, digital proofs for professional work on each piece, thus ensuring that it displayed at the end is the printed product delivered.
Most common steps in the prepress process
The first step in prepress is preparing the data for transmission. Most files come in high-resolution Adobe InDesign or PDF formats, not excluding other options. Prepress preflighting will validate the characteristics of the files to ensure they meet the proper production requirements. Upon completion of validation, the next step is to create tests, which are sent to the customer for approval.
In the following list we share the most common steps in the prepress process indicated by step.
- Checking and verifying the design file for format, fonts and resolution
- The color test. Match computer generated digital color codes to print color codes
- Align and format the art to print.
- Creation of a sample or proof of the design before the final printing process is thrown away
If you have any questions about the topics discussed here about prepensa, or any other question related to printing, do not hesitate to write to me at the contact page.
If you’ve worked with a printing company, you may have heard the term “prepress” at some point. Understanding this step in production development is vitally important to owners, purchasing agents, advertisers, designers, and other roles involved in the printing and materials production business.
Starting with definition, this term refers to the process of creating a print layout and all subsequent steps that lead to the final print project with the expected results. A digital prepress machine receives information electronically and converts the data that is ultimately used to get your files onto paper while on the press.
Using a complete prepress kit can be a huge time saver, especially if you have a professional graphic designer to produce designs in the correct format. Different file sizes, output needs, and file types can slow down the printing process, but using a proper prepress technique produces file output quickly and efficiently.
Fundamental aspects of the prepress
At the moment that a user sends the files with the art to a printing company for production, the prepress phase has begun, the ideal is to achieve that the project at the end reflects their hard work in the design process, so A trained staff must always be used and willing to meet the needs in the results expected by the client, combining an electronic workflow with high-speed digital prepress, digital proofs for professional work on each piece, thus ensuring that it displayed at the end is the printed product delivered.
Most common steps in the prepress process
The first step in prepress is preparing the data for transmission. Most files come in high-resolution Adobe InDesign or PDF formats, not excluding other options. Prepress preflighting will validate the characteristics of the files to ensure they meet the proper production requirements. Upon completion of validation, the next step is to create tests, which are sent to the customer for approval.
In the following list we share the most common steps in the prepress process indicated by step.
- Checking and verifying the design file for format, fonts and resolution
- The color test. Match computer generated digital color codes to print color codes
- Align and format the art to print.
- Creation of a sample or proof of the design before the final printing process is thrown away
Digital prepress, what does it consist of? Is there any difference with the aforementioned?
The digital prepress is the group of processes prior to design, given by means of a computer and steps prior to printing.
It begins the moment the designer finishes the creative process and ends when the material is delivered to the printer for printing.
The responsibility and care for an excellent digital prepress result begins with the designer’s work before sending the files to prepress and ends at the printing house itself.
This means that since the design is being made, care must be taken to use the appropriate color profiles, apply trapping or overprint when necessary, send complete files, include all sources, linked images and illustrations, etc.
The steps that are part of the process vary, but usually include their being reviewed, edited, diagrammed, scanned and separated according to their color. Some clients elaborate in the prepress process, the order of pages, the transformation of the digital files to a format that is useful for the company responsible for printing, for example to the Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) format.
The work format must be taken into account and what the materials will be printed on, this in order to know in what resolution the images and effects should be used. It is not the same to print in offset, digital, flexo or screen printing, and the quality of the paper will also vary in our decision, as well as in some cases the type and brand of inks which will be a determining factor in the prepress work.
After each variable is identified, the job is processed and ready to print.
Types of prepress
There are 3 basic types of prepress that vary according to your taste and need for the work you are going to do, ranging from fixed templates to being able to change them from a computer.
Tradicional
Traditional prepress models vary according to our need or means of production, although they can be divided into 2.
PHOTOSENSITIVE
Its function is to pass the images from one place to another using some light-sensitive substances.
REGISTER
They can be mechanical or manual production methods that are intended to make the right impression.
Digital process
In this method it is necessary to use the computer to use special editing programs, a great difference from the traditional process is that here there is no original fixed model since it can be modified to taste where the ps files or base cross are handled. data, negative – positive formats and aluminum plates in polyester.
Proceso mixto
Its function is to combine the types of prepress such as screen printing, digital printing, offset among others, this is very useful since thanks to technological advances it generates a reduction in production costs.
Importance of prepress in graphic design
As designers, it is wrong to think that it is only useful to know about composition, a correct handling of color and typographic fonts, to correctly use manual or digital techniques, in addition to having a good investigation of our design, but and the printing models, where are they left? ?They are not important?
Well, here are some more important points that must be taken into account to achieve a quality finish in the designs and not be disappointed:
- Knowing how to correctly choose the printing system in which the design will be reproduced, it is not the same to devise the project for a digital printing than for a flexographic or screen printing, each of the printing processes has its own technical, design and printing requirements .
- The model, size and quantity of paper or substrate (plastics, glass, cardboard, metal among others.) That will be used for printing.
- Is it necessary to choose colors in CMYK format? Or a color separation using Pantone colors? The latter contains specially mixed inks, you must take this into account when printing and the former if it is recommended.
- The number of copies that will be made, we add 5% of waste on the quantity that will be printed, for example, if you want 2000 reproductions, 5% is 100, which is the number of copies that must be printed more, in order to deliver the exact number of reproductions to the client and that they are not missing because some came to go wrong or defective.
- The finish that will be given to the printing, such as a uv varnish, registration varnish, laminated, etc., you must consider how it will look in advance and from this rule out designs that may affect the result.