Prepress Tips for Designers

[Fredpan123]

i am not very kind to them: one time a young woman came with a job that after we "proofed"; she came and asked again for another proof and another proof. what she was actually doing was she wants to generate several versions for her project. she wanted reflex blue which we hit on the dot: so finally i asked her tell us what color on the PMS book. she looked at me and asked, what a PMS book is. I told her search it on google and excuse me i have another customer to attend to. i feel so sorry for her. > let us continue our proud legacy and not succumb to these new zombies that have permeated the industry >
and @dabob> these days when we looked at the file we immediately tell them this involved "AA"'s (in our printers' code: author's alteration) and depending on the hours spent to fix the file it will cost them $18 per quarter of an hour or you can walk away. thanks guys!

 

[Fredpan123]

@zombie: they can look for cool fonts and some photoshop plug-ins we are still at the end process > think of it this way > they can write their scripts but they still need Universal to distribute their film > thats what they are or else they can drool over their design on their desktop HP and Epson printers which they bought for 159 dollars at staples. one time i told a guy: look, we invested hundreds of thousand dollars on litho and digital equipment. were not stupid and we know what we are doing, so go home and fix your file to abide by our standards or find another printer who can put up with you.

 

[dabob]

i am not very kind to them: one time a young woman came with a job that after we "proofed"; she came and asked again for another proof and another proof. what she was actually doing was she wants to generate several versions for her project. she wanted reflex blue which we hit on the dot: so finally i asked her tell us what color on the PMS book. she looked at me and asked, what a PMS book is. I told her search it on google and excuse me i have another customer to attend to. i feel so sorry for her. > let us continue our proud legacy and not succumb to these new zombies that have permeated the industry >
and @dabob> these days when we looked at the file we immediately tell them this involved "AA"'s (in our printers' code: author's alteration) and depending on the hours spent to fix the file it will cost them $18 per quarter of an hour or you can walk away. thanks guys!

Fred . . . your cheeper than I am . . .were about 25-30 per 1/4 hr (or more depending on the customer) . . . and the guy I was talking about gave me an 8.5 x 5.5 postcard in illustrator 3 ( I think - it was about 93-94) and he had placed about 8 8x10 inch color photos in the doc and masked them . . . I had to print that D#%N file over 4 nights one color at a time so it wouldn't choke the print server and rip - now a day the modern rips would chew it up without a problem but back then . . . but it was a different world . . . thin net, local talk farallon networks and a 1 gig drives that cost over 1000 bucks, can't say that I miss them.

 

[Fredpan123]

@dabob: dont we miss those days? > this is such fun to have time to send messages > but do enjoy your coffee this morning. things are getting to roll today and i am on my way to have my first coffee this morning. peace and blessings my friend

 

[gig0]

The wonderful "electronic" age where for a quick $50 anyone can be a designer using the world class Adobe Suite. At the same time the tools for the prepress industry set the expectations on us as giant button pushers. No matter how much we try to educate our salespeople they turn around and see the flawless ESKO demo and wonder why we complain at all. It's become a thankless job. Instead of "Wow, what craftsmanship!" it's become "Great, you pushed a button. Here's another job".

But I think we've all had that attitude towards things in this modern age.

I think it's gone beyond craftsmanship. We've become reverse engineers.... trying to figure out where the designer went wrong. For example, copying and pasting from Illustrator into Indesign. I'm sure most of us have come across this and also had to explain why this didn't turn out on press the way they saw it on the screen.

This is why I have lost faith in the educating process and learned to accept that it's the armchair designers who help keep us employed.

 

[Fredpan123]

hi all: i wake up everyday and tell myself > i am just the printer > what your file is > that's what you get. we usually run a proof > then they come around and dclare: "this is so cool" (meaning praise myself!) then we let them sign the proof sheet on both sides and we run the job. we run a job so awful on our canon digital copier with so many flaws but they approved it > i did not even look at the copy > we box them and they pick it up, paid the job and went home happy. we ended the day feeling good its over but not to happy that there are some 4,500 of the 8.5x5.5 printed both sides that is horrible. but thats our life! enjoy your weekend.

 

[goya]

I want to start my job in a printing company, and they use preps 6. I didn't have any experince by this imposition software. Could you help me to find or have its manual?

 

[MacTwidget]

Here is a link to DL from Kodak

http://download2.kodak.com/16/8301/1/Preps_6.1_UserGuide_EN.pdf

 

[whosbrett]

You suck and I hope you die in a fire.

This just made my day, Thanks. lol!

 

[Michal James]

Designer should design user friendly layouts with attractive colors combinations. Avoid unnecessary data from the site and use only relevant and importance information.

Hanging Scale

 

[jainpranav111]

Yes this should be always White type not overprint... thanks for memories...

 

[Printing Wholesale]

It's funny how I can relate to each and every one of these posts! Hah

 

[maas]

No, we dont print in RGB

 

[russpears]

Hey I got two:

Yea, I know your logo looks good on your screen, but it is not good for print.

and

I understand you re-sized your logo, but starting with a low resolution file and up-sampling did not make it better for print.

 

[dabob]

Another one I just realized/remembered - there is a select all unused colors function and a delete selected colors . . . . USE IT!!!! Do you really need all 257 colors in your swatch pallet when its a 2 color job?????

Oh and please get rid of the stuff left over on the paste board!

 

[Fredpan123]

As I have said and I will repeat it again: as professionals we deal with "artists" who in the work represent the incomptence of those that taught them design in school. Times have really changed.

 

[gordo]

As I have said and I will repeat it again: as professionals we deal with "artists" who in the work represent the incomptence of those that taught them design in school. Times have really changed.

Actually the times haven't changed much. At the end of the posting at this link:
The Print Guide: The Wayback View - Graphic Arts Training
Is an article from 1923 on the topic. It could have been written today.

Gordo

 

[minch]

I hope you charged them for recreating it. If you didn't then, IMHO, you've done a diservice to yourself and to the industry. You should not be proud of what you've done. You should be ashamed.
You don't have to explain anything. Just show a proof, even a softproof as to how the logo will look at that size. If they like it then get sign off and print it. If they don't then it is up to them to get the original art or contract you to recreate it.
Best, gordo

Hello Gordo,
my experience is that if you do not do this then the clients go to someone who will and you lose a clent.
Regards minch.

 

[gordo]

Hello Gordo,
my experience is that if you do not do this then the clients go to someone who will and you lose a clent.
Regards minch.

The context is important to understanding my comment. It was a response to a post by "Visualaid" who wrote: "this just happened: customer gave me a 2" x .047" 72 dpi logo to be blown up to 12x18 parking sign. instead of having to go and explain this, i just recreated it." (my emphasis).

What Visualaid did is not atypical and I wasn't trying to insult him.

The "instead of having to go and explain this i just recreated it" in effect says that there was no engagement with the customer about the issues with the art they supplied nor an explanation/discussion about the options available to move forward. The customer loses because they don't have an opportunity to learn and hence will continue to create poor inputs. The printer loses because profitability is diminished and perhaps more importantly the value of what they did is unknown to the customer. Because the customer does not know the value of the work that the printer did then the client has no special reason to continue doing business with this printer. You're just as likely to lose this customer whether you do the unpaid work or not.

So, in that context, doing the work does a diservice to the printshop and to the industry since the shop encourages customers to be ignorant and create art that will need to be rebuilt - at no cost. It does a diservice to the industry because it reinforces the notion that whatever a customer creates as input art will be "fixed" at no charge thereby diminishing the profitability of other printers.

Hope this makes it clear. Gordo

 

[WishIWasScotty]

At one time it wasn't uncommon that a designer would select a pms color within illustrator and proceed to use that pms from each library. CV,CVC,CVU. Then proceed to do the same thing with their photoshop monotones and duotones.

You mean that is uncommon? I get one or two color offset jobs in all the time with 6 or more separations because of that. I just cross my fingers and hope that their fonts don't mess up when I open in Illustrator to fix it. I tried sending it back, but it takes longer to explain what's wrong, wait for their reply, send it back again because it still isn't right... than it does to just fix it.