Prepress is a printing industry term that refers to the preparation of printed work for reproduction. It includes tasks such as the design and layout of the work, creation of graphics, selection and conversion of typefaces into outlines, and other steps necessary to prepare final digital files for press. Preparing a final digital file requires attention to detail and specialized skills. It is also called imposing.
Imposing involves several steps:
- Scanning artwork or photographs into an electronic format with sufficient resolution. The image should be scanned at 300 dpi (dots per inch) in color mode if you’re planning on printing it in color (in grayscale if you plan on printing only black-and-white).
- Setting up your document correctly by choosing a page size and orientation — whether portrait or landscape — as well as trim size, bleed area, margin widths and column widths (if applicable).
- Determining which elements need to be separated from others so that they are printed separately on different plates during production (such as placing text over images within one document), which can save time if those images are used frequently throughout the project.
Prepress is a key part of the printing process. Without it, you can’t print your work! To ensure that everything goes smoothly with your printing job, it’s important to have someone who knows what they’re doing handle this step. Prepress is a very specialized field, and not everyone has experience with it. That’s why we offer our services at Accent where we specialize in pre-press preparation for commercial print jobs. We know what goes into making sure that your project turns out perfectly on press—and we want to help you do just that!
