Pre-press bottlenecks
Even when a PSP eliminates bottlenecks in the finishing department, however, it is common for problems to persist at the pre-press stage.
Many of today’s print shops are receiving smaller jobs with quicker turnaround times. As such, the numbers of files that must be ‘cleaned up’ before going through a raster image processor (RIP) and then printed are growing significantly. This work takes time and slows down the steps after it.
Fortunately, pre-press workflow software is now being developed specifically for the wide-format graphics industry. Although such software has long been a staple of the commercial printing sector, it cannot simply be refurbished for sign shops, but must instead be reconceptualized.
Most graphics are delivered to the shop as—or can be converted to—Portable Document Format (PDF) files, so it is best for a workflow to incorporate PDF-based tools for the RIP stage. Finding errors at this stage, however, is problematic, as the time spent RIPping cannot be recouped and holds up other work. Finding errors while printing is even worse, as it means an expensive waste of labour, time and materials.
For these reasons, preflight tools are also important. They receive incoming files and determine whether or not they are ‘clean’ enough to pass along to the printer.
The shop must first create profiles that dictate its systems’ specific requirements for a clean file, but once that work is done, it becomes easier to feed PDF files into the system and make diagnostic checks. If a file has any problems, it is flagged.
Beyond flagging, a good preflight system will also let the pre-press department make edits, even extensive corrections, to the PDF file without having to send it back to the customer or to its native application.
Layout tools have also become extremely important in ensuring substrates match up after printing for the finishing phase. Otherwise, those substrates are expensive to replace.
One of the most helpful layout functions is true shape nesting, whereby the configuration of various graphics on a sheet of material is optimized so as to reduce waste. This not only saves material, but also time. The more items that can be printed on a single sheet, after all, the less time needed to complete the job, at both the printing and finishing stages.
