Prepress Bloopers
To ensure proper output, always supply your printer with the exact screen and printer fonts used in application documents—and be sure to include them all.
Transferring font files is completely legal, provided the printer maintains valid licenses to the associated font libraries.
Here at R.R. Donnelley, when a job uses a typeface we don't own, we purchase the font from the foundry as a standard procedure.
MODE MASHING
Cameras and computer monitors capture images using the colors of light: Red, Green, and Blue (referred to as RGB).
But four-color offset lithography is based on an entirely different system: The Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black (CMYK) color system.
Proper file preparation includes translation of all images from RGB to CMYK before sending them to the printer.
Failure to make this translation early in the workflow can trip you up. You've put time, effort, and squinting into the color correcting of RGB images, but they're not in their final CMYK format.
Additional processing will be needed on the prepress end to translate all the images from RGB to CMYK. Worse, the proofs you get back will show color that differs from what you expected.
ORPHANED IMAGES
Many publishers streamline the production of application files by using Open Prepress Interface (OPI) to simplify handling of high-resolution scans.
With OPI, two versions of each image are generated at scanning. The smaller, lower resolution, faster rendering file is used by the designers to create the digital layout.
The larger, higher resolution image remains in the scanner's system until production begins. During processing, the lower-res image is automatically and precisely replaced by its higher-res sister, balancing optimum digital quality with processing efficiency.
The key to this approach is in the parallel naming of the files. The computer comprehends the common naming conventions, and swaps the images with precision.
