Pre-Press Services and why we can’t provide them
There are several reasons why we can’t provide this service. The most important ones are:
1. Every production shop has its own way of processing art. They all have different programs and different pre-press processes specific to their shops used to take art files and make them print ready for their process. Some shops use brand new technology and equipment, while others have been doing it their own way for over 20 years.
2. Your vendors will need to proofread everything prior to production and therefore will have more in-house control to make adjustments beforehand. This includes vector sizing, ensuring color accuracy, applying bleeds and crop marks.
Often times of our customers request help in setting up some of these specifics, but with every shop doing something slightly different, it is almost impossible to make that happen on our end in a way to guarantee no errors for every customer on a consistent basis.
Let’s look at a few different examples
Sizing:
When it comes to sizing your artwork prior to production, the benefits in dealing with vector art is that you can scale the vector to whatever size is needed without image distortion or loss of clarity, since vector is a mathematical based format there are no specific resolution settings.
Fitting to a template:
Template fitting or creating a template is another request we often get but needs to be handled by your print vendor so they can adjust the art to match their equipment and programs.
Your vendor needs to control the art, adjust it to their specifications for printing on the specific product. Ensuring the design fits the proper boundaries of that product.
Anything “out” of the safe zone may get lost or printed incorrectly. Keeping elements inside a safe zone ensures that the design stays intact throughout the printing process.
These types of things need to be controlled and tested by your vendor in order to make sure the job to run smoothly.
Halftones:
If you request for vector art to be redrawn and done as “black and white with halftones” or “spot colors with halftones” for the needed color scheme we will create blends into the image built of percentages of a solid PMS color, rather than dots.
Creating a halftone dot pattern is best created by your production staff or print vendor. They can take into consideration the size of the art, the size of the direction of the dots and needed screen mesh count, to name a few.
Vector gradients:
Dot-pattern Halftones:
Creating an actual halftone dot pattern in vector art could cause issues in pre-production when your print vendor go to size the art and the dots do not adjust properly. Substituting the actual dot pattern as a gradient value will allow for the dots to be adjusted more easily after it runs through the RIP software in pre-press.
For more information please contact us!
service@ignitiondrawing.com 253-284-0733 ignitiondrawing.com