Prepress

Example

A printer receives the file for 5,000 A5 flyers. The design is 148×210 mm, but the press needs 154×216 mm: 3 mm of bleed on every edge, so trimming leaves no white slivers. Images are 300 dpi at that size, text sits at least 4 mm inside the trim, fonts are embedded, black text is 100% black rather than four inks, and total ink coverage stays under 300%. The file goes out as a PDF/X with crop marks. Anything missing comes back from the printer’s preflight — and anything that slips through shows up on paper.

Why it matters for a business

A print run happens once. A batch with a cropped logo, or with grey-looking black text, is paid for twice. Prepress is the point where the same mistakes still cost half an hour. It is also where the decisions that keep a brand consistent get made: which CMYK build the brand colour is, whether it needs a Pantone, whether two different printers will land on the same result, and whether the varnish and the dieline sit where the design expects them. Prepress keeps the files as well — the working ones and the final PDFs — so the next run does not start from scratch.

What to ask

• Who does the prepress, the designer or the printer, and who carries the cost if the run comes out wrong?
• Do we get a PDF with bleed, crop marks and embedded fonts, or only the working file?
• Is there a proof before the run, and is it a colour print or a sheet off the press itself?
• Which profile are the colours converted with, and what happens if the brand colour cannot be reached in CMYK?
• Who keeps the files for the next run, and in what form are they handed over?

Prepress and the files the printer needs are part of the print materials we produce.