Page 140 - Graphic Design and Print Production Fundamentals

128 Chapter 5. Pre-press
the way we process images for electrophotographic imaging or imaging with an inkjet engine. We
must also distinguish between preparing images for a lithographic press and a flexographic press.
Electrophotography and inkjet are growing technologies used to produce customized — or
individualized — communications materials. Lithography and flexography are used to manufacture
mass-produced media products. These four imaging processes are the core imaging technologies that
reproduce 90% of the images produced in the graphic communications industry.

Many graphic designers are not aware of what must happen to the computer graphics they produce in
order to ready them for manufacturing reproduction. Their experience is limited to hitting ‘command P’
and their computer graphic magically transforming the illuminated masterpiece on their Apple Cinema
Display, to the disappointing rendition that appears on the tray of their inkjet printer. Most of the pre-
imaging processes are automated in software functions that are built into the print driver, so people
are not aware of how a computer graphic must be prepared for an imaging device. Since more and
more of the images produced through inkjet, electrophotography, lithography and flexography start their
lives as computer graphics, it is important to understand these pre-imaging processes to properly design
computer graphics for the manufacturing process.

This chapter will analyze six pre-imaging processes in detail, and describe how they are altered to
prepare computer graphics differently for each of the four imaging technologies. We will refer back
to the computer graphic design/creation process to outline how graphics could be altered so they can
be more effectively reproduced with each imaging technology. This is the missing link in the graphic
communications business in today’s marketplace. Designers create computer graphics in software that
is increasingly designed for electronic image creation. They do not realize that the same graphic they
created for a home page on the Internet should not be used for the cover of a book. They email the image
to a lithographic print production facility and the pre-press department of that facility does hand springs
trying to alter the image to work on their sheet-fed presses. This adds time and cost to the job that is
usually buried. The designer never gets feedback on how the design could be altered to be more effective
for lithographic production.

When pre-press was a computer-to-film process, there were two important factors that ensured designers
got this critical feedback. The software for computer graphic production was specialized for print
creation and content could be photographed or computer-generated and combined on film. Computer
graphic designers knew their image was only going to be used for the cover of a book and created it
appropriately. They also had to submit their computer graphic to a graphic communications production
facility that was separate from the lithographic print facility. If there were extra costs incurred to prepare
the computer graphic for a lithographic press, the designer was informed and invoiced for the extra
work the image preparation entailed. So the designers were working with computer graphic software that
would not let them create imagery that was not appropriate for print production, and if they did dream up
an image that did not work well, they were immediately informed of the extra costs they were incurring.

In the 21st-century marketplace, all graphics that drive our four primary imaging technologies are
created on the computer. Computer graphics software is designed to create effects for images that will
stay in the electronic media: web, broadcast, digital film, and hand-held communication technologies.
Pre-imaging processes are either automated or a part of the print manufacturing business and usually
considered the painful part of feeding the print machinery that no one wants to talk about. So computer
graphic designers drive software that lets them create outrageous images for imaging reproduction
manufacture. They are less concerned about the ‘print’ part of a media campaign, and manufacturers