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File Prep Exercise

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Today's Exercise

During this class, we will review basic preflight concepts by completing one business card pre-flight together. You will pre-flight the remaining four cards on your own.

This is an example of a four colour printing press.

This is a two colour press in operation.

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Our Goals

These files were prepared by an art department as comps to present to a client. There was little regard for preparing them for print. The goal was to show visuals to the client. Now you need to make these files ready for press.

You'll open each card to fix all of the technical problems in it. The card needs to look the same as the originals in the end.

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What to Look For

This is a list of problems to look for in the files. Not all problems are in all files.

Re-format Art Boards

Make your Art Board the size of the cards. Add an eighth inch bleed to the document.

Clean up fonts

Only the fonts used in the design should be in the document. You need to use the Find Font function in Illustrator to get rid of the superfluous fonts. When you hand in the fonts, copy the whole folder, don't pick out individual instances of the fonts.

Convert to 2 colour

These are all 2-colour print jobs. All colours need to be on the two specified colour plates.

Clean up the Art Board

Delete all artwork on the Art Board.

Clean up colours in Colour palette

Delete all un-used colours from the Colour palette.

Get rid of transparency

There are all kinds of transparent objects in the files. Either delete them, or make them a screen of the same percentage of the spot colours.

Only one layer in Layers palette

Delete all useless layers in the Layers palette. If there's artwork on them, you'll need to move it to the one good layer.

Add trim marks

There needs to be trim marks on each card. You'll use the Effect>Crop Marks function in Illustrator

Add bleeds

Some of the cards have bleeds on them. None of them are executed properly. You need to have a 9pt (1/8" or 0.125") bleed. No more.

Collect for output (Minimum .ai file and fonts.)

Create a folder for each card. In it, there should be one Illustrator file. It should also have a Fonts folder.

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Create Colour Separations

To reproduce colour and continuous-tone images, printers usually separate artwork into four plates—one plate for each of the cyan (C), yellow (Y), magenta (M), and black (K) portions of the image. When inked with the appropriate colour and printed in register with one another, these colours combine to reproduce the original artwork. The process of dividing the image into two or more colours is called colour separating, and the films from which the plates are created are called the separations.

We're going to create this PDF simply to demonstrate that our InDesign document separates properly. It's only a reference. The file will not be used for anything else. If the job is simply a four colour process one, we should end up with a four page PDF.

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There are many things wrong inside these files. Use the above check list to rectify all of the issues.

Illustrator File

Your Illustrator file should be set up as shown above.

Separations

We ensure that the files colour separate properly. The spot colours are specified inside each file.

Fonts

We will verify that fonts are set properly. There can be no extraneous fonts in the files.

PDF

We will produce one press-ready file for each card.

We will also prepare one colour separated PDF for confirmation of proper colour separation setup.

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How to Get a "A"

This is a purely technical assignment. It requires accuracy and thoroughness. Be precise. Name all of your files exactly as shown on this page. You'll be graded with that in mind.