Position:Home>Visual Arts> When sending digital artwork to a printer...?

A digital file needs quite a bit of preparation to ready it for print!. Exactly what needs to be done will depend on what kind of printing process will be uses!. If the printer will only output the final product from an inkjet plotter, it may be that little, if anything needs to be done!. A lot depends on the format of the digital file!. For example, if your file is an InDesign layout, and the printer's computer recognizes InDesign, then he can send it directly to his plotter!.

Howeve, if the design will ultimately be printed on a real web or sheet press, then a LOT of "preflight" checks and settings need to be determined!. For example, if the press will be using the standard Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks, any graphics in the layout will need to be converted to CMYK gamut and then the colors separated to make the individual color's plates!. Many amateur designers make the mistake of designing graphics in RGB, for example, and then "place" or "import" them, in this format, into their page layout program!. They look fine on the monitor and print on their desktop printer, but, at the print shop, someone has to make the conversions to CMYK and then do the color seps!.

The point is, that the "someone" has to get paid, and, therefore, the print shop's customer is the one who gets the bill!. In my situation, as a freelance designer, the more I can do to "preflight" the digital file, the lower the printing costs will be!. That means that I can bill my clients for my time doing this, rather than the print shop owner getting this money!.

Again, exactly WHAT needs to be done to prepare the file depends on the design, format, and the printer's needs!. If the design requires a full or partial "bleed," where the color goes all the way to the edge of the page, the design needs to put the color BEYOND the edge of the page by a certain amount and crop marks added!. A design with multiple colors will need registration marks added!. Certain adjacent colors will need to be "trapped" or "choked" so that any slight drifting of the print plates or paper does not cause any unwanted blank, or white spaces!.

The "how to do it" depends on the software application(s) you are using!. They all do it in different ways!. Heck, all of the different services you mentioned can be done in something like Microsoft Word, but I coudn't begin to tell you how to do it because I have, at least, three or four different applications that can do it better because they were designed to do these functions!. (I like to use the best tool for the particular job, and my computer system has a LOT of tools)

I took the time to learn these, and other operations of my layout applications, (originally, QuarkXPress, Pagemaker, now InDesign and, sometimes, Illustrator, Photoshop, Corel and others) Again, the more I do myself, the less I have to pay someone else to do!. I suggest you talk it over with the commercial printer!. Ask him what the file needs done!. Ask him what formats are needed and what applications his computer system recognizes!. One of the nicest conveniences of recent years is the almost unversal acceptance of !.pdf files by most print service bureaus!. Again, ask them if you need to do anything!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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