Traditional Vs. Digital Prepress

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Traditional vs. Digital Prepress

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AllBusiness.com Create your business plan. Subjects Here’s how. Getting Started Prepress Tasks Learning DTP win millions!! traditional vs. digital Just three easy steps can Teaching DTP make you a millionaire! Graphic Design Prepress is the process of taking a document from an idea Things to Design to a final product. It involves design including type and HotJobs.com Better Jobs for a Better Life Typography images, preparing files for output, proofing, revisions, Scanning and then finally printing the final publication. Win a piece of *NSYNC! Prepress Head to Alloy.com for a For many of us who might never have worked in chance to score your very PostScript own platinum copy of No Printing publishing prior to the advent of desktop publishing, Strings Attached! Career digital prepress may be the only type of prepress we know DTP in Canada or understand. But before PageMaker and laser printers there was a whole other industry (and a lot more people) Hardware involved in getting a book or a brochure published. Software Paper To help understand the differences and similarities in the Templates two processes, here is a brief rundown and comparison of Marketplace Free Clip Art conventional or traditional and digital prepress tasks. You - - free stuff - - Free Fonts may immediately notice how many different jobs the get a website$499 Free Photos designer takes on now that desktop publishing software long distance deal has replaced (or substantially changed) the job of the $$$$ win big $$$$ Adobe FrameMaker typesetter, paste-up professional, stripper, and others. cheap computers! Adobe InDesign free tech stuff TRADITIONAL DIGITAL high paying jobs Adobe PageMaker Task Corel Ventura PREPRESS PREPRESS quick jobs search MS PowerPoint free ebiz solutions MS Publisher looking for love? Microsoft Word ebusiness info QuarkXPress $50 off mp3 player discover romance Subject Library book club longdistancedeal All articles on this topic

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http://www.desktoppub.about.com/compute/desktoppub/library/weekly/aa112499.htm (1 of 6) [9/13/2000 10:07:36 AM] Traditional vs. Digital Prepress Find books related to this Individual or a group Individual or a group Related sites topic Click Here choose the overall choose the overall look and feel, purpose, look and feel, on About Videostore budget, and the form purpose, budget, and Find videos related to this Amateur Photography topic Click Here of the publication. The the form of the Art/Technology designer may or may publication. The Computer Peripherals not be involved in the designer may or may Graphic Design ShoppingAbout conceptualizing. The not be involved in Your favorite products, right Graphics Software here Click Here designer then takes the conceptualizing. Photography the information and The designer then Publishing comes up with rough takes the Scrapbooking Stay up-to-date! Technical Writing Subscribe to our newsletter. sketches (generally information and Design more refined than just comes up with rough Web Design thumbnail sketches) representations done for the project which on the computer

Do you like our sites? include measurements (they may do their Wish to share them with for specific elements own thumbnail others - and earn money? and type sketches initially). Become an Affiliate More Sites on this Topic specifications. These rough comps Wanted Fonts may use dummy (greeked) text and placeholder graphics. Several versions can be quickly turned out. The typesetter The designer has receives text and type complete control specifications from the over type -- digital designer. Typesetting type -- changing it that may have been on the fly, arranging done with lines of it on the page, metal type, later gave setting leading, way to type tracking, kerning, Type composition by etc. No typesetter, machine, such as no paste-up person. Linotype. The type then goes to the paste-up person who puts it on a paste-up board along with all the other elements of the publication.

http://www.desktoppub.about.com/compute/desktoppub/library/weekly/aa112499.htm (2 of 6) [9/13/2000 10:07:36 AM] Traditional vs. Digital Prepress

Images are The designer may photographed, take digital images cropped, enlarged, or or scan in images, do reduced using cropping, scaling, traditional photo enhancement Images photographic (including color processes. FPO boxes correction) in an (for position only) are image editor then placed on the paste-up place the actual board where images digital images into should appear. the publication. After text and FPO The designer places boxes are in place on everything in the the paste-up boards publication from text the pages are shot with to images, a camera, negatives rearranging as made. The stripper necessary. File takes these negatives preparation involves plus the negatives of either preparing a all images previously digital file (insuring acquired and sized to that all digital fonts fit the FPO boxes. The and images are stripper checks correct and supplied everything then with the digital file

File Prep assembles it all into or embedded as sheets or flats. These necessary) or flats are then imposed printing out a -- arranged in the "camera-ready" order in which they page. File prep may are to be printed include imposition, depending on how which can often be they will be folded, done totally within cut, and assembled. the software used to The imposed pages are create the made into plates from publication. which the publication is printed onto paper on the printing press. A possibly Because it is so time-consuming much easier to print process where pages out interim copies or are printed and proofs (to a desktop carefully proofread for printer, for instance) errors. Fixing errors many, many errors may involve making can be caught in this new negatives and way before the carefully replacing the publication gets to "bad" items in the the stage of making Proofing original making sure negatives, plates, they line up perfectly. and final prints.

http://www.desktoppub.about.com/compute/desktoppub/library/weekly/aa112499.htm (3 of 6) [9/13/2000 10:07:36 AM] Traditional vs. Digital Prepress The new plates are created and the pages are printed again. Errors can creep in at many stages as there may be many different people working with individual elements of the publication. Paste-up to Film to The process may Flats for imposition (if remain the same or required) to Plates to similar (Laser Printing. Output to Film to Plates) but other Printing processes are possible including output directly to film from the digital file or directly from digital file to plate.

Learn more about prepress and printing through my extensive collection of links devoted to topics such as camera-ready artwork, collection & preflight, imposition, and working with service bureaus.

Jacci Howard Bear Your Guide to Desktop Publishing ICQ#10206585

Related reading Prepress jobs decline, Desktop Publishing on the rise Increased use of computers in typesetting and page layout will replace or force major changes in many prepress jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects declining job opportunities for prepress workers, typesetters, paste-up workers, film strippers, and most other printing workers. But a projected growth rate of 74% and 22,000 new jobs for Desktop Publishing specialists puts

http://www.desktoppub.about.com/compute/desktoppub/library/weekly/aa112499.htm (4 of 6) [9/13/2000 10:07:36 AM] Traditional vs. Digital Prepress DTP in the top 10 of the fastest-growing professions. [Read full article]

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