Pre-Press Preparation

Run some and let us see them. If the imposition isn't straightforward or obvious, make us up a dummy. Run laser separations and look at them; if something doesn't separate correctly before you send it to us, it's highly likely it won't when we run it. And, remember, just because it came out in colour on your inkjet printer is no guarantee that it will separate in CMYK to film or plate (RGB files will only come out on the black separation). Fonts. Put screen fonts and printer fonts on your disk, including any fonts used in graphic files. Again, look at your laser proofs; if a font looks dodgy (bitmapped or substituted by Courier) it probably means the printer font is missing or damaged, so don't use it. Graphics. Put all of them on your disk yourself. Don't leave this task to 'Collect for Output' (this will leave behind DCS separations and embedded files). Don't give us files that we don't need (we're simple folk and this tends to confuse us); this generally means work files or low res files, although files that have been embedded in Illustrator or Freehand EPSs are useful to have. What's in a name? Even the way you name your graphics files can ease the process from disk to plate. Because the TAIGA workstation is a UNIX-based system, certain characters are UNIX commands, and should be avoided. For instance, full stops, hyphens, forward or back slashes and ampersands should be avoided in the naming of your files, as they are all command characters. So, in all events avoid such names as "luggage/suit-case&glasses.h.res.CMYK" (all those command characters render the file 'undefined'). If you must use PC file format suffixes (and, of course, you don't need them on a Mac), make sure that the suffix is correct (ie- three upper case characters following a full point at the end) Thus, '[filename].TIF' is correct, '[filename].tiff' is meaningless. Try to use as few characters in the name as possible. If the file names are too long (and let's face it, there's no need to write a novel every time you save a file), the full name won't appear in the picture update menu and may be confused with other similarly named files. Keep it short and to the point: "Tree", "Big tree", "Big tree hi", "Big tree montage', 'Big tree duo" are all acceptable, as well as descriptive enough.