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Information about Prepress

Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the procurement of a written manuscript and original artwork, and the manufacture of a printing plate, image carrier, or (traditionally) forme, ready for mounting on a printing press.

Prepress processes

The following items have each been considered part of prepress at one time or another: typesetting, copyediting, markup, proofreading, page layout, screening (of continuous-tone images such as photographs), retouching, page assembly (stripping), imposition (combination of many pages into a single signature form), trapping (also referred to as spreading and choking), separation (specifying images or text to be put on plates applying individual printing mediums [inks, varnishes, etc.] to a common print) and platemaking (photomechanical exposure and processing of light-sensitive emulsion on a printing plate).

However, in most modern environments the tasks relating to content generation and refinement are carried out separately from other prepress tasks, and are commonly characterized as being part of a different process (i.e.: graphic design). Some companies combine the role of graphic design and prepress production in a role or job title known as desktop publisher or DTP associate.

The set of procedures used in any particular prepress environment is known as a workflow. Workflows vary, depending on the printing process (e.g., letterpress, offset, digital printing, screen printing), on the final product (books, newspapers, product packaging), and on the implementation of specific prepress technologies. For example, it is not uncommon to use a computer and imagesetter to generate film which is then stripped and used to expose the plate in a vacuum frame; this workflow is hybrid because separation and halftoning are carried out via digital processes while the exposure of the plate is carried out via an analog one.

History of Prepress

During the 1980s and 1990s, computer-aided prepress techniques began to supplant the traditional dark room and light table processes, and by the early 2000s the word prepress became, in some ways, synonymous with digital prepress. Immediately before the mainstream introduction of computers to the process, much of the industry was using large format cameras to make emulsion-based (film) copies of text and images. This film was then assembled (stripping) and used to expose another layer of emulsion on a plate, thus copying images from one emulsion to another. This method is still used; however, as digital prepress technology has become less costly, more efficient and reliable, and as the knowledge and skill required to use the new hardware and especially software have become more widespread within the labor force, digital automation has been introduced to almost every part of the process. Some topics related to digital but not analog prepress include preflighting (verifying the presence, quality and format of each digital component), color management, and RIPping.

PDF workflows also became predominant. Vendors of Prepress systems embraced the PDF format, and submitted a subset of PDF as a standard to ANSI and OSI called PDF/X (PDF for eXchange).

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See also

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Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers.
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Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium. Before the advent of desktop publishing, typesetting of printed material was produced in print shops by compositors working by hand, and later with machines.
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Topics in journalism
Professional issues
Ethics & objectivity
Sources & attribution
News & news values
Reporting & writing
Fourth estate • Libel law
Education & books
Other topics

Fields
Advocacy journalism
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markup.

For generic discussions of markup in various contexts, see:
  • Markup language — a type of language that describes a document's formatting
  • Markup (business) — a term for the increase in the price of goods to create a profit margin for a business.

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Proofreading traditionally means reading a proof copy of a text in order to detect and correct any errors. Modern proofreading often requires reading copy at earlier stages as well.
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Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements (content) on a page. Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalog layouts, proper
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Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of equally spaced dots of varying size.[1] 'Halftone' can also be used to refer specifically to the image that is produced by this process.
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Stripping is a dying trade in which film negatives are arranged in a pattern, which will create a series of pages. There is an individual negative for each color to be printed on a printing press. Colors are arranged in order to fit together with the other colors to be printed.
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Imposition is a term used in the printing industry. Print operators will print books using large sheets of paper which will be folded later. This allows for faster printing, simplified binding, and lower production costs.
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Spreading and choking is a prepress technique, more often referred to as trapping. It consists of creating small overlaps between abutting colors in order to mask registration problems on the printing press later on in the graphical production.
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This article is about the Standard Occupational Classification System (SOC) used in the United States. Similar SOC systems are used in other countries including the UK [1] [2] , Canada [3] ,Spain [4] , the Philippines

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Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a personal computer and page layout software to create publication documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local economical multifunction peripheral output and distribution.
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DTP Artist is Desk Top Publishing worker, a special name used in Advertising agencies, Publisher, Color separation, Printing and other related industries. A DTP Artist usually skilled in multiple computer design applications, such as QuarkXPress, Adobe Photoshop and others.
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A light table is a viewing device that is used to review photographic film or artwork placed on top of it. It provides even illumination of the subject from below through a translucent cover and fluorescent lights that emit little heat.
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camera is a device used to capture images, as still photographs or as sequences of moving images (movies or videos). The term as well as the modern-day camera evolved from the camera obscura
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Stripping is a dying trade in which film negatives are arranged in a pattern, which will create a series of pages. There is an individual negative for each color to be printed on a printing press. Colors are arranged in order to fit together with the other colors to be printed.
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Pre-flighting is a term used in the printing industry to describe the process of confirming that the digital files required for the printing process are all present, valid, correctly formatted, and of the desired type.
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In digital imaging systems, color management is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printers, offset presses, and corresponding media.
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A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing system which produces a bitmap. The bitmap is then sent to a printing device for output. The input may be a page description in a high-level page description language such as PostScript, Portable Document
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Web-to-print, also known as Web2Print or remote publishing , is a commercial prepress process that bridges the gap between digital content online and commercial print production.
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Job Definition Format (JDF) is a technical standard being developed by the graphic arts industry to facilitate cross-vendor workflow implementations of the application domain. It is an XML format about job ticket, message description and message interchange.
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