This week I heard more cool stories -
Stories like, "I remember way back when..."
Pre-Press was a laborious process:
...where every single image was given individual attention.
...where every color had a piece of film.
...and we cut, copied, and pasted things onto a production board.
...and we were many: film strippers and camera men, platers, and more.
But now, what would have taken 3-10 hours and many more employees using conventional Pre-Press to accomplish, digital can do in just 1 hour with fewer workers. Here is the flow of digital pre-press at Watermark Press:
We use Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, and Preps to prepare the clients' native files: all the fonts, and all the images, culminating in a specified design layout, and ultimately, the layout in which we will print the work in larger quantities.
The Preps program assists in assigning this press layout, whether it is Sheetwise, Work and Turn, or Work and Tumble (which I will describe in greater detail during my Press rotation). Using Preps, we go through processes of laying out page size, gutters, bleeds, orientation, trim marks, pagination, die lines, and visual tools for quality control such as color bars, step wedges and take-off bars. Tim has appropriately named some helpful programs "Marks of the Beast" and "Take Off Ehh!!!" to assist with marks and colorizing take-off bars.
Basically, we are making the files that we receive more compatible with our technologies here. We are also foreseeing any problems before they emerge on the press, and making sure the press run is as efficient as possible. So much of pre-press is being a detective, and knowing how to speak to our various machines.
The language spoken by most modern day printing technology is Post Script. Post Script acts as a translator for the aforementioned programs, translating, for example, an In Design file into a Page Description Language (PDL) that printers can understand. That language is made up of directions regarding all the imposition assignments we gave. We save our files in Post Script, move them into Prinergy Workshop in order to get them all lined-up and ready for Prinergy, which outputs them into our various pre-press proofing devices: the Integris, the Ink Jet, and the Trendsetter (used for higher quality Spectrum proofs, and also for making plates.)
In addition to reviewing the overall pre-press process flow with Tim, Jim helped me revisit the concepts of line screen, and half-tone dots of ink, where each ink color is assigned a standard dot angle, thus eliminating interference, a printing no-no called moiré. I learned how to check for line screen, and how to tell the difference between Stochastic and AM screening. Stochastic is made up of equal size dots with variable spacing, producing the effect of higher or lower ink density. AM, or Amplitude Modulated screening varies the dot size with equal spacing between the dots, also affecting the perception of the ink's density.
If my learning process here resembled a line screen, I would have to call it stochastic. I come into bits of knowledge so frequently and so randomly, but everything, however small, is equally relevant and important. The more I come into knowledge, the more deep and vibrant the colors become: the more competent and confident I can hope to feel in due time. After all, it's all the half-tones, collectively, that make up the whole picture. And I'm just in the pre-pre-press stages of a career in print, trying to design something I can really be proud of.
And "pictures are not passive", according to Jim's 1998 copy of the Warren Standard's "How to Read a Press Sheet." Printing, instead, is a "process that demands reading images diligently and learning to communicate so that others can see the same things."
On that note, my career will require all the labor, editing, and effort of the printing industry back in the day... It will take many hours, and many diligent, print-savvy minds to communicate to me the understanding of print, past and present, that I'm seeking today.
And I hope that's okay.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The Print Industry in Today's Digital Landscape
Week two came and went, and my study of Pre-Press continues.
Of particular interest to me throughout the week has been the past and the present of the printing industry, particularly the pre-press process, prior to and throughout the digital and internet revolution.
Oscar, who runs the digital press, and the entire Pre-Press Department (Jim, Tim, and Chris) were really instrumental in my investigations of printing's laborious former processes, including hours and hours of cutting film, as well as the leading digital programs of today's pre-press repertoire. I shadowed Tim most of the week since he is a natural teacher and even got to sit in front of the Mac to prep and edit a few jobs using Workshop, Preps, Prinergy, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop, and In Design. I helped by loading the Integris, which outputs preliminary print proofs.
Tom Sheffield, a leader in the Sales Department, was employing an exacto to cut a dummy (a mock-up of a particular job, which, in this case, was a folder) when he helped inspire my mini research project."This is what's been missing in the printing industry of today," he told me. "Because everything's so digital, we lose some of this hands on approach."
However, from my keen observations, this hands on approach still thrives here at Watermark Press. I see it with the meticulousness that pervades every department, in the proofing and re-proofing, in the quality control that matches the ink colors just right...There is no doubt that these employees take great pride in the pursuit of printing perfection.
Many of the long-standing employees here have been in the industry for twenty or thirty years. Through experience, these veterans of print have cultivated various ways of accomplishing the same task. They have archived in their minds all the trouble shooting they've pushed through, insisting that (as Jim says), "Doing print right is about making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes. That's the only way to learn: doing things wrong once or twice or thrice before you get it right."
Oscar shed some light on this too, reflecting on his 19 year career with Watermark and his, quite literally, lifelong career in print. He shared his view that there's a real difference, between learning through experience and interaction with the craft, and a one-way, absolute way of thinking. The latter, I've seen, is how computers, the machines themselves work. This printer has a higher resolution than the other one. This program can do this, but not that. It takes skilled professionals, like the ones we have here in Pre-Prep, and years of experience to make the magic happen. Computers can only do so much on their own.
That being said, here's something to stew on regarding technology as we know it today, and how we may very well come to know it in the future...It is moving and shaping our global society and our professional landscapes at exponential rates.
In other news, I have had my first encounters with the "zen" of working in print. As Tom suggested to me, I have a journey ahead which will enable me to explore that further. He advised me to enjoy myself, to make friends with my colleagues, and to embrace the experience, even if I am entering the printing industry at a tough time economically in a rapidly evolving communications market. I'm ready now to make mistakes, and learn through direct experience and context. Challenges will continue to present themselves, and I am hopeful about rising to meet them.
Of particular interest to me throughout the week has been the past and the present of the printing industry, particularly the pre-press process, prior to and throughout the digital and internet revolution.
Oscar, who runs the digital press, and the entire Pre-Press Department (Jim, Tim, and Chris) were really instrumental in my investigations of printing's laborious former processes, including hours and hours of cutting film, as well as the leading digital programs of today's pre-press repertoire. I shadowed Tim most of the week since he is a natural teacher and even got to sit in front of the Mac to prep and edit a few jobs using Workshop, Preps, Prinergy, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop, and In Design. I helped by loading the Integris, which outputs preliminary print proofs.
Tom Sheffield, a leader in the Sales Department, was employing an exacto to cut a dummy (a mock-up of a particular job, which, in this case, was a folder) when he helped inspire my mini research project."This is what's been missing in the printing industry of today," he told me. "Because everything's so digital, we lose some of this hands on approach."
However, from my keen observations, this hands on approach still thrives here at Watermark Press. I see it with the meticulousness that pervades every department, in the proofing and re-proofing, in the quality control that matches the ink colors just right...There is no doubt that these employees take great pride in the pursuit of printing perfection.
Many of the long-standing employees here have been in the industry for twenty or thirty years. Through experience, these veterans of print have cultivated various ways of accomplishing the same task. They have archived in their minds all the trouble shooting they've pushed through, insisting that (as Jim says), "Doing print right is about making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes. That's the only way to learn: doing things wrong once or twice or thrice before you get it right."
Oscar shed some light on this too, reflecting on his 19 year career with Watermark and his, quite literally, lifelong career in print. He shared his view that there's a real difference, between learning through experience and interaction with the craft, and a one-way, absolute way of thinking. The latter, I've seen, is how computers, the machines themselves work. This printer has a higher resolution than the other one. This program can do this, but not that. It takes skilled professionals, like the ones we have here in Pre-Prep, and years of experience to make the magic happen. Computers can only do so much on their own.
That being said, here's something to stew on regarding technology as we know it today, and how we may very well come to know it in the future...It is moving and shaping our global society and our professional landscapes at exponential rates.
In other news, I have had my first encounters with the "zen" of working in print. As Tom suggested to me, I have a journey ahead which will enable me to explore that further. He advised me to enjoy myself, to make friends with my colleagues, and to embrace the experience, even if I am entering the printing industry at a tough time economically in a rapidly evolving communications market. I'm ready now to make mistakes, and learn through direct experience and context. Challenges will continue to present themselves, and I am hopeful about rising to meet them.
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