how should jobs progress through Prepress departments?

[JimBob53]

I am wanting to know what steps a job goes through before it goes to press in other shops.
I started working for my present employer about 18 years. In 'the old days' art was built on computer and printed out on a laser printer then sent back to me to be shot, stripped and plated. Then came the Imager. Jobs were sent to negative, film processed and negative stripped then plates made.
Now the Designer builds the art, exports to PDF, places PDFs in template and sends to Ctp. It has increased the work load of the designers and left the imposition/plate person with almost nothing to do.
Here's how I would like to see it work. Let me know if you think this could work.
Designer build job, proof to customer and in-house. Export PDF. Send PDF back to imposition person. This person would make template, place PDFs, and send to plate. What do you think?

 

[DCurry]

Where's the prepress person in all of this? I don't agree that there should be an "imposition" person - that role should be included in everything a prepress tech does. He/she gets the approved file from the designer, then preflights, RIPs, imposes and proofs, then sends to plate.

 

[JimBob53]

Sorry I was not clear. Yes, all you mentioned would be in the job of the person imposing the job. Now all that is done by the designer. The only thing I do is feed plates to the plate setter.

 

[pdan]

imho few people can design attractive materials. I would further suggest that creative minded persons are less adapt at the nuts & bolts technical details involved in imposition, color management and equipment upkeep and operation. (That CTP needs cleaning and maintenance.)

If there is enough work I would think the creative person designs to final approval than hands off to the individual with stripping, platemaking & imaging experience.

Flame Avoidance - I'm certain there are many competent designers who can impose & send to plate/digital RIP.

 

[dabob]

Here in my shop is the routine . ..

Get the job/files "Prepress" checks corrects and produces a .ps file or pdf to a set of specifications.

He then sends it to the Plate room where they use (in our case) Signa Station to imposed, make proofs, and then output plates.

While it is very likely that a good pre-press person could easily master both the DTP software and the Platesetter software it seems here that in Pre-press we are spending a lot of time "fixing" problems in the files and then the Plate room person takes a couple of minutes imposing, contract proofing, and preparing plates.

We find that the DTP time frequently exceeds the plating persons time requirements for the same job . . .

 

[RobC]

The time that the designer spends on a project is probably sold for more than the time the prepress person spends on the project. i.e hundreds of dollars for design work vs. less than $100 to prep and impose a file (before contract proofs / plates). I rather see my designer doing billable design work and have my prepress person busy with working on multiple jobs at once with production press and bindery. i.e busy prepping, imposing, proofing, plating. When the production manager needs the imposition changed for whatever reason (can't run on press as imposed, paper came in different size than planned, switching job to a different press), I'd rather interrupt the prepress person to have him/her make the change vs having the designer make the change.

Along those lines the role of the traditional prepress person will be / is changing to a workflow manager - someone who interconnects software tools using a product like Enfocus Switch and builds workflows and customizes them to minimize the human touches. if you aren't already working with hotfolders at least, start learning it's a basic building block of automated prepress. This way the easy jobs flow right through and ones with exceptions are the ones the prepress person touches.

 

[DCurry]

I've been doing prepress for 20 years and I rarely see a designer do impo. In fact, I don't want the designers to do impo because they don't know all the necessary details, like which press is running it, run style, sheet size, limitations of the folder, etc.

 

[Ben]

Are all the jobs designed in house? Most of the time the technical prepress guy shares a good amount of time fixing files submitted by customers who don't know what they are doing .

 

[tommrz]

FAST...according to every sales person I have ever worked with.

 

[dabob]

I seem to spend 80% of my time fixing files 15% of my time "designing and typesetting" and 5% keeping the online portal up to date and the other 10% repairing equipment . .. lets see thats 80+15+5+10=110% . .. that seems about right

 

[rich apollo]

Design and prepress are different disciplines.

 

[JimBob53]

The majority of our jobs are designed in-house. We do have a few regular customers who supply PDFs. I do spend time correcting errors in a few jobs brought in by customers.
We are blessed in that our larger customers, who supply PDFs, have trained designers who do a better than average job.

 

[Ben]

If you feel like your job might be in in jeopardy and you have time to spent. Read about and implement color management, this gives you an infinite amount of time to spent. Because you make it as crazy as you like .

 

[Fatboysmart]

There are two kinds of DTP (prepress) people... the creative ones and the technical ones... These are two very different disciplines which rarely merge into one person in my opinion. Probably different sides of the brain involved.

 

[DCurry]

I'm one of the rare breeds that has both sides. Having the technical side makes me a better designer, and having the artistic side makes me better understand what the designers are trying to achieve and come up with better technical solutions when necessary.

 

[rich apollo]

I'm one of the rare breeds that has both sides. Having the technical side makes me a better designer, and having the artistic side makes me better understand what the designers are trying to achieve and come up with better technical solutions when necessary.

Witchcraft! Sorcery!

 

[semi-tech]

Where's the prepress person in all of this? I don't agree that there should be an "imposition" person - that role should be included in everything a prepress tech does. He/she gets the approved file from the designer, then preflights, RIPs, imposes and proofs, then sends to plate.

That's what we do. We receive the PDFs and process them. We do have to make edits to some of the PDFs occasionally (knockouts, color conversions). Any bigger issues are sent back to the artist to fix.