Press Checks

Watch out for trim lines and your bleeds. Especially in a 150 page piece - a bad trim or bleed that is off can be deadly and can ruin the look of the whole piece. If you didn't proof the original job - or even if you did - have your printer pull the first few off the press and let you look before they run the whole job. Trim can vary 1/32" either way, so make sure this has been compensated for. I had a job once where, had I not done this, a 100M catalog run would have had color bars along the bottom of the inside signature!

Also know who is responsible for various parts of the job, and make sure you understand the mechanics of how your work is produced; what is involved at prep, strip, print, collate and bind. In the above example, the press guy tried to blame it on me, saying that my margins were off. However, color bars are not put in by the designer! Know which possible errors can be yours, and which would most definately be theirs, so if comes up, you can make sure you are compensated for it (or know that the "oops" was yours and damage-control).

Even though most printers need only 1/8" bleed, I always pull it out the extra 1/8" to make it 1/4" - just to make sure. If you have spreads with a graphic across, make sure that it lines up properly left and right (unless it is in a middle signature and on a fold). One quick and dirty way to fix a bad bleed when there is no time to modify the file is to have the printer run it at 105% and bump it to fit. You can increase up to about 115% without a visual loss in resolution, assuming that you are dealing with a 300-600 dpi file. This trick has saved me more than once when I had no other option. You may never run into this with your job, but if you do, you will win points with your boss by being able to direct the printer to fix it properly and at a way that will not affect the cost of the job (like an AA to fix the file would).

Are you going CTP from native files, or are you furnishing locked and ripped PDFs? If you are going from the file, double check your fonts and make sure that your version is the one that has been loaded. When I did catalog work, we included vendor ads, and I can't tell how how many times the vendor supplied a knock-off. The printer would load the file, and invariably, there would be some reflow....until they loaded the font I supplied. The thing is, you have to KNOW what you sent and how it is supposed to look. I have had the experience where a vendor supplied a fat sans-serif, the font refused to load and defaulted to Arial....and it almost escaped me because it looked visually OK. With this particular company, their font was an integral part of their brand, and it would have been a major faux-pas for me to let the job run as-is....even though it looked fine. It always helps to have a print-out of what you sent so that you can do reality checks once the proofs come back. It can "look" OK and still not be OK.

One thing that happens way too often with native files is things flipping to the back of the page. I have had graphics and blocks of text hide behind other things. I have also gotten files from others and discovered colored boxes and other things that were forgotten or overlooked by the original designer. Didn't see them on the print-out....but once the printer ran a proof, they were there. Your standard office printer or Fiery has a color tolerance of +/- 5-10%....but the system that generates the proof has one of 2-5%. Anything below 2% in any color usually will not image to plate. So often, things that did not image on your system come up loud and clear on the printer's. I had that happen once with a graphic. The background looked white, yet when the printer ran the proof, there was a faint blue screen in the background. I did not figure out why until I opened it in PhotoShop and eyedropped the background. Sure enough, there was a 4% cyan there for some reason! This is yet another reason why you should have a proof copy from your own system to closely compare to.