do you know what is prepress knowledge ?

[Eugene L]

do you know what is prepress knowledge ? I see this all the time in Job Search ads.

[eyezberg]

everything needed to get a (printable) document ready to be printed: layour, rough, drawing, quark xpress, illustrator, photoshop...i think.

[upuaut8]

Print experience is a big plus to design shops. Most of us cannot find work exactly because we dont have that end of the design experience.

[time2design]

I would have to say that "prepress knowledge" is really knowing more about what it takes to get something to print correctly; not just knowing applications.

Depending upon the printing (process, flexographic, screen printing), you have to know how things work in order to correctly tweak it the way you need to.

For example, in screen printing, if I wanted to print blue letters on a black shirt, I would need to first lay down white and then the blue so it would show up. Little things like that (also, especially learning how imagesetters (for negatives or positives) handle files).

A better analogy for you guys might be like having knowledge of Explorer's and Navigator's differences and what their limitations are.


t2d

[Saulo]

I am a Prepress Tecnician, I am working in Monterrey, NL about 20 years ago. there are three stages in the printing process: prepress, press and finishing. all the work who is need before press is prepress work, is about correcting layout errors; some times images corrections over PDF files.

El trabajo de preprensa es ademas recibir el trabajo del cliente, atenderlo y entregarle las pruebas de color para que las firme antes de que el trabajo entre a la prensa. tienes que sabre algo de paquetería de diseño.

ademas, como lo comenta el compañero arriba, es necesaria la experiencia, ya que no se trabaja de la misma forma para todos los medios de impresion.

El trabajo de preprensa, en algunos lugares, es hacer de vendedor, conocer al cliente y sus necesidades de impresion

[graylensman]

Necrothread. Better call Ghostbusters.

[a tadster]

pre-press normally has to do with preparing "plates" for a 2 color or 4 color press machine.
These plates are made of a thin plastic that are normally 19 inch by 13 inch and go into special printers.

In a two color situation one plate would be for one color and the other for the other color. But it's all printed out in black, and then the press operator applies the color to it with pantone (or similar) inks. The plates get rolled through the press machine along with the paper that is to be printed on in between, the final output is a smooth printed graphic as apposed to one made up of digital dots.

With the advent of great digital printers like the konica minolta bizhub, the need for press machines is going down, however many people still prefer them for the smooth results. Also, a good press operator can do cool things with the ink, one trick (i'm not sure on the details) is to raise the ink off the paper forming a ridge effect that is common on some business cards. Two color press work is mostly done on professional business cards, but is also used for newspapers and many other types of printed media.

I worked at design firm called Alphagraphics, most of the work we did there was off a 2 color press machine, i had to get to know the press operator well and deal with the occasional "plastic" cut from the plates.
Quark was the main software application used.

[r3h0ld3r]

Holy crap this thread is old. HOLY CRAP this thread is old. But I believe the question has been answered several times.