Although, generally speaking presses are very well behaved these days
and you very rarely see the problems I am about to
show you, they are the sort of thing you need
to be looking for when you are attending a press check.
This may seem kind of basic, but you want to
make sure that it's running on the stock that you approved.
Make sure that that stock is the correct color.
That it's the correct weight and it's the correct
finish, whether it's coated, or uncoated, or linen finish,
etc.
And then you want to look for the behavior of ink on paper.
So let's take a look at some of the things
that could happen in the behavior of ink on paper.
Especially when you have a crossover, you have something that
appears on facing pages, pages two and three for example.
Remember that those pages aren't printed next to each other on the press.
You want to make sure that those pages match.
You want to make sure that the left page and
the right page, with the same content, have the same color.
So be looking for color shift.
This you will almost never see.
Presses are so computerized now, the control is so tight,
but it's still something for you to look out for.
And of course this is an exaggerated example.
But you want to make sure that there is no bad register.
And in the case of this file, there should be overprinting.
That black shouldn't be knocking out the color underneath.
So, something's gone wrong somewhere
along the way.
Pinholes are when something in the way of dirt or some other demarcation
has happened to the plate so the ink isn't transferred to the paper.
So here on this gentleman's cheek something's happened to
the magenta plate and that ink isn't depositing on paper.
If there's any streaking, you can see across the woman's face, this
means that there's uneven ink coverage or there's a problem with the plate.
And again, this is exaggerated to call
your attention to it.
You'd almost never see anything this pronounced, but this
is the nature of streaking that you're looking for.
Hickeys are pieces of trash that have adhered
to the plate or adhered to the paper.
And you can see that the ink is sort of gummed up
in that little area, and then it's prevented from printing around it.
Scum is where there might be trash on the plate, or there's some
problem with the coating on the plate, and ink is being transferred to paper
in the white areas where it shouldn't be.
And again, this is exaggerated, just for dramatic effect, just
to give you an idea of what you're looking for.
Any broken type, again this would be because of damage
to the plate, so you want to look very closely.
Even though your proof is okay, we're talking about mechanical
issues on the press and this is something that you want
to be looking for under a loop so that you can
find any of these problems no matter how small they are.