Ten Years of Change Before Printing

After graduating, he worked in the printing industry with color concepts and drawing skills he learned in school. At that time, he was unfamiliar with printing. When he first learned everything from scratch, he gradually learned to print the industry. It has been more than a dozen years, from the initial pure hand-crafted to the current electronic workflow, technology has brought about changes in printing, which is surprising.

Early manual process

In the early manual work process, the art editors must rely entirely on the editorial staff to plan the layout and page number in advance according to the copy and pictures provided by the customer, and send the texts and pictures separately for production.

The production process is as follows:

1, text:

After the US editors calculate the font size, determine the font, style, and mark integrity, they must type and type, and if the calculation is wrong (the font is too big or too small), the large camera should be used to scale the text to a suitable size. Wash into photo paper to finish.

2, pictures:

Determine the size of the picture and calculate the zoom ratio. Specify whether the tone or color of the original needs to be specially trimmed. Send the color separation scan to output the mesh, and then print it through the proofer.

3, the final draft:

The American editorial staff arranged according to the previously planned text and pictures, pasted the text on the layout, and used a stylus to draw the position of the frame. After completion, the photocopy was made on the layout and the image proofs were pasted before being sent to the customer for proofreading.

4, modify:

After proofreading, if you need to revise or increase or decrease text, often move one row in a row in order to add or subtract one word, thus causing headaches for the US editorial staff, and a manuscript is modified to the end, often it will be dirty or have font skew, etc. Phenomenon: If the customer has opinions on quality in the picture, in addition to re-separation, he must rely on the experienced color-correcting master to use the exposure principle of the negative film and the potion to manually trim the mesh. The finished mesh can be proofed again. Machine proofing, imposition until the customer confirmed the correct.

5, make up version:

The imposition is divided into "small-fixed version" and "big-engagement version". Before making a small imposition, the imposition staff must first send the finished draft of the beautiful staff to the photographer for text-line photography. Due to the poor development control of photographic typing, resulting in different text sizes on the same surface, photographers have to adjust the exposure time according to their experience to improve the font size. After the imposition staff gets the text film, they must first perform the correction and clean the dirty points on the text film to combine the images and texts. The operation will be based on the colors of the beauty design and approval. After the small imposition is completed, the collage is made into a large version according to the position of the page order, and after the large version is completed, the printing and printing are performed.

In this traditional workflow, it is unavoidable that constant modifications must be made in certain sections. This irreversible operation process not only affects the entire working time, but also increases the cost. Moreover, such a complicated operation process is also often Errors caused by human negligence have affected the quality of printed documents.

Medium-term group system operation process

In response to the tedious work flow, advancement has replaced the high-level grouping system with manual small-batch operations. As long as the completed editing and picture scanning of beautiful editing staff is converted into an information file and stored in the system, it can be beautifully edited on the system. The combination of colors and graphics, as indicated by the personnel, can not only make imposition work, but more amazingly, it can make special adjustments or partial adjustments to the images, and you can immediately see the effects on the computer screen, as long as you do not store them. Will not affect the original file, both convenient and can reduce errors, but also improve the accuracy of small fights, but its shortcomings are large equipment, high prices, so that investors dare not easily buy, so often because of the lack of a complete framework, The work was not smooth and affected the efficiency of the entire operation process.

Moreover, due to equipment problems, it is also necessary to output the assembled layout to the back of the film. At this time, although there is a hot-rotating proofing (such as the Fuji Color proofing system) instead of traditional proofing, it is not necessary to print. , In addition to saving media, it also shortens the waiting time for screens and prototypes, but Fuji Color art materials are also very expensive.

This process has only improved the work of the imposition part. There has been no improvement in the editing and rewriting of the beauty book. Slowly, computers and software have been used to replace it. However, this process can be said to be a print job. Brings you into the beginning of the DTP.

Computer Operation Process (DTP) at this stage

In the early stages of entering the DTP, MAC computers took the lead in the field of printing operations, and then IBM compatible PCs also followed the investment. The file format was different from the beginning, and the file transfer between the high-level group page system and the DTP was common. , resulting in cross-platform file production problems, coupled with the lack of technical maturity, often caused by the machine crashes, or files in the output stage can not be output, or because the output does not have fonts caused by the output after the text is missing or garbled, pictures messy The phenomenon of waiting for the output makes the output personnel gravely puzzled. Now these problems are all improved with the skilled technicians and technological progress, and then the file compression is developed to save storage space and transmission speed.

Today's design workers and printing companies all use computers. The only difference is the MAC and PC. All file data are stored and edited by reading the data, and then use the media such as MO, CK, hard disk, or Inter-network transmission, etc., US editors will be able to change all the input file information in the computer fonts and font size, deformation, etc., even if the modified text will automatically arrange the computer, and the United States staff not only arrange the text Even image images are combined together with text and do not need to be spelled by the imposition staff.

The workflow in this stage can be said to be a complete integration of the picture and text, the United States editors only need to transfer the formatted page file to the digital proofer, digital proofing can be done, the customer can see the complete graphic The page not only saves the operating cost of the imposition, but also saves the material cost of the repetitive film, and also improves the accuracy of the imposition registration. After the customer confirms, the document can be output to a large version of the negative film or plate. Such a procedure not only simplifies the complicated operations, shortens the entire printing process, but also improves the environment and quality of the printing industry.

A new generation of publishing work flow, more towards the electronic publishing, the development of PDF (Portable document Format) portable file format, the conversion of fonts, images, vector objects, etc. in the file pages into a multi-purpose file format, that is to say The same file can be applied to different output devices, such as digital proofing, web output, direct publishing, digital printing, Internet browsing, etc.; PDF file format, the traditional electronic publishing work must face many customers to different The files and fonts produced by the software, and the format of the image files, etc. have been completely integrated. The operators no longer have to worry about the problems caused by fonts, images, or incompatible output drivers. Program errors can be eliminated.