Print Workflow Standardization; educate, preflight, convert, automate
It is nearly impossible to make a truly standard, yet open (i.e., allowing many and any customers in) design-to-print workflow; but their are standard tools, tips and tactics to make things flow properly. Here was a great post on the PrintPlanet forum asking for preflight, prepress and general workflow help. It reads:
Basic Workflow Standardization
“I am a print shop manager in an in-plant. One of my biggest problems is fonts. Most of the documents I get are from Word or uneducated Publisher users. Some other problems are users creating a two-color jobs in CMYK and black text not being pure black. Currently we handle everything we get on an individual basis, but it is getting completely out of hand. I need to start putting in place some systems to handle some of these problemsIs there a easy way to convert documents to pdf with the correct specifications before I get them? For example is there a pdf print driver that I can put on my web site or push out to everyone on my network that it will create a pdf to my specifications so I do not have to worry about fonts or poor resolution? If so how much does something like that cost?
Is there software, preferably hot-folder driven, that can look at a pdf and if it is only two colors create a two color pdf? Is there software than can ensure that black text is actually pure black so it doesn’t count as a color impression if sent to a color machine?
What I am really try to do is get some type of standard work flow in place so I can actually start working on automating some our task. Any advice would be appreciated.”
Source: http://printplanet.com/forums/prepress-workflow-discussion/18272-basic-workflow-standardization
Do read the source link, as there are various excellent responses on how to tackle these common, yet none-the-less, pesky prepress problems. In short I would add this;
- File Preparation Education – A tough one, but at least communicate your desires.
- Preflight – FlightCheck Designer, FlightCheck Pro, Postflight: Acrobat Pro, PitStop; the more the merrier.
- File Conversion – PUB2ID; Microsoft Publisher to Adobe InDesign, Adobe plug-in.
- Enfocus SWITCH hot-folder driven workflow, with FlightCheck of course as one flow (video):
June 28th, 2009
It’s an interesting topic, as most companies know or have been quietly dealing with, the files have been coming from multiple input sources for a long time now, be that word, some freeware application, or the commercial grade design applications; but now we are seeing that these input files could actually be used on one of the required output channels and therefore the files need some sort of preflight of the output channel process they are destined for.
An example could be classified ads where office people create a simple word document and submit it to the pre-media company by email, an automated business process needs to be able to check that the word or character count conforms to the ad specifications and that their are no additional objects in the document, but, these ads could now be coming in as part of the campaign and thus the pre-media workflow needs to handle and perform the checks before they are pasted upstream.
We have for a long time tried to educate people on the formats we want to handle, but instead have found ourselves placing extremely complicated business process workflows in place to save time and money.
Therefore there is an evolution of the graphic arts world coming where the software and servers we once installed to handle the standard graphics formats for our pre-press workflow now need to handle ANY file format that generates a form of output in the new pre-media world.
http://tunicca.wordpress.com
September 3rd, 2009
[...] interesting piece on Moore’s Law and the prepress department, which was a good insight into pre-media: “These components of pre-media all have their place of importance and need to be correctly [...]