- [Instructor] Let's take a look at what happens
to your job as it goes through the printing plant.
Here's the life of a job,
how the printer processes your work.
First, you submit your files.
As the job is entered, it's given a unique job number
so that it can be tracked throughout the entire process.
The first person you talk to is probably a salesperson,
but once the job is entered
and all the questions are answered,
then the salesman hands it off
to a customer service representative, a CSR,
and the CSR is probably going to be the person
you talk to most during the life of the job.
The CSR hands the job off to an estimator,
who determines how much ink, how much stock
is going to have to be purchased to run the job,
a scheduler, who determines when the job's going to run,
and a job planner, who determines how other processes
are going to be performed, such as die cutting or embossing.
In some places, the estimator, scheduler, and job planner
are all the same person.
Sometimes it's separate persons as you see here.
Once all of those processes are established,
it goes back to the CSR,
who then passes it on for preflight.
In some printing companies, the CSRs perform preflight.
More commonly, prepress people perform preflight.
So what's preflight?
It's a process of looking for problems
long before the job goes to press.
What if there are problems?
Well, there are two options.
Either the printer can fix the problems in-house.
If they're small, you probably won't incur a charge.
But if they're large,
that might add a little bit to the cost of your job.
Or perhaps the client elects to make those corrections.
Once the corrections are made and the job is resubmitted,
it goes through preflight again
to make sure everything's okay.
And once everything's all right,
then the job goes on to prepress production.
So what is prepress production?
Well, it might include some image work,
including scanning or retouching, color work,
and then prep work to ensure
that the file is set up correctly
in order to image as you expect.
There's ripping and trapping,
and I know those are kind of odd terms.
RIP stands for Raster Image Processor,
and that's a combination of hardware and software
that converts your, let's say, InDesign file
into a format that an imaging device understands.
And by imaging device,
I mean whatever the final printing device is.
It means making a plate for an offset press
or sending the job directly to a digital press.
And then, trapping ensures that there's no gap
between dissimilar colors.
If you have blue next to yellow and there's no common color,
you might see a little bit of a white sliver,
a little bit of a gap.
Trap takes care of that.
Page proofs are then generated
to show you the mechanics and the color,
and these are considered contract proofs.
If you sign off on this,
this is what you expect the job to look like.
If there are problems, there need to be corrections.
Once they're made and the job is approved,
then the job goes to something called imposition.
Imposition is the process of placing the pages
in the correct position for the final plating.
If you've ever taken a magazine apart,
you'll notice that page two
doesn't print next to page three.
Those pages have to be laid out in a configuration
for final print, and cutting, and binding.
Once that's done,
usually they'll generate something called bluelines.
They aren't always blue often anymore.
They're printed off large format inkjet printers.
But they're meant to show the final format of the book.
And that way you can see how the pages are laid out,
make sure that everything trims correctly.
If there are corrections, of course,
you go back through the process again,
generate new bluelines.
Once everything's approved, then the job goes to plate,
if it's running on an offset press,
or it's ready to go directly to a digital press.
In either case, makeready is performed.
Makeready is just the process
of getting the press up to speed,
getting the ink coverage up to spec,
getting the job ready to run.
Then, there's a press check.
The pressmen makes sure that everything matches the proofs
that were approved, and then the print run goes live.
After that, there might be some specialty work,
including die cutting and embossing.
There might be some inline finishing.
Some presses can actually perform folding
right on the press.
If not, then the job goes
to a section of the printing plant called the bindery,
where there's folding, and binding, and trimming.
And finally, your job is done.
There's your job,
printed, trimmed, and bound,
and it's ready for the world to admire.