Fight Prepress Foes with these Self Defense Techniques

As a skilled graphic designer, you are truly a superhero with special powers. But no matter how formidable you are, one of the following prepress foes will challenge you. We can help. We have fought and overcome every one of these tricky opponents many times. Here is our list of the evil prepress horde and the techniques we use to fight them.

 Low Resolution Man
This strength-sapping fighter sucks the resolution out of your images, often leaving puny 72-DPI husks in their place. This evildoer can be hard to find. Enfocus's PitStop Pro is a sure-fire weapon against him. It can warn you of every image below a threshold you set and will even compute the actual DPI of a scaled image. If you don’t own a PreFlight program, you can still find Low Resolution Man by printing your job on the highest resolution printer you have and checking for jagged images.

 Ms. Extra Plate
This fiendish foe adds extra printing plates that you don’t want in a host of ways. She can hide one in a slightly different name in an imported image (“Pantone 106 C” versus “Pantone 106 CV,” for instance). She can also leave an existing RGB color on your page. She can add a separated PMS color to a spot color job or a spot color to a process color job. Finding her work is easy: make sure to proof every job by printing all separations. If you find more plates than you thought should exist, she snuck in and hurt you. To defeat her, find the element that uses the extra color and change it to the color you wanted. Then delete the bad color. If your application warns you that the color is still in use, you will have to fight another round with Ms. Extra Plate.

Sir Missing Font
This tricky foe sneaks up on you and hides a printer or screen font. He can cause you a day or more of proofing misery. However, he is easily vanquished by using Quark’s Collect for Output, InDesign’s Package.

Image Thief
This subversive foe makes sure the high-resolution image you paid for does not get included in your final file. He can be fought with the same tools that harm Sir Missing Font: Collect for Output, Package or FlightCheck. Beware of his favorite trick: calling Low Resolution Man to leave an FPO image behind.

Color Shifter
This freakish fiend changes the appearance of colors from monitors to proofs! He is truly dangerous. Your only weapon against him is a print proof, such as the ones we provide. In some cases, he can also be fought by your own proofing printer, provided that it is calibrated, consistent and most importantly, accurate to our presses. Be wary of color laser printers as they are notorious for letting the Color shifter subvert their quality.

As a seasoned graphics superhero, you are used to fighting deadlines, last-minute changes and low budgets. Now that we have shown you how to fight the prepress horde, you can rest easy knowing that no prepress pest can stop you.

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