Hello Chris!
Although summer is starting to fade into autumn, we’re hoping that the great fun and successes of our clients, suppliers and staff this summer can keep on rolling. If time flies when you’re having fun, we’ve been having A LOT of fun this year. And that’s awesome.
Now that the excitement around the business purchase has sort of settled down we can get to the tasks of hiring staff, and updating equipment. First up on the equipment list is a new folding machine. It’s coming to us from Ireland on a freighter – so we’ve got at least a month to rearrange our space and make room for it. We saw a video of the folder in action this week and it’s awesome. Little did young Chris know that in his forties he’d be excited about a new machine that folds paper!
Along with the new folder we need to add three key people to join our team: an experienced printing plant general manager, an experienced print sales person, and a print estimator. If you know anyone who could be a good fit please have them get in touch.
PDF proofs
We rely heavily on PDFs for proofing but did you know that there are different “kinds” of PDF proofs? If your project is going on press we will send you a rasterized PDF proof. This means that we’ve processed the file and converted it all to dots (aka rasterized it). The PDF we send you is a reduced resolution version of the file we use to make the plates that are used for printing your project. We reduce the resolution to make the file small enough to email – but other than the reduced resolution it is the file we’re printing.
When projects are being printed digitally we often send back a non-rasterized PDF. The content of the PDF is often a combination of raster images and vector text and illustrations. This is because these files do not go through the same RIP (raster image processor), and do not get plated.
With both options you are seeing a representation of what we are going to print. If changes are needed now is the time to do it. If not simply let us know that it is APPROVED and we’re on our way. But keep in mind that once you say approved there’s a chance that we could start making plates, or printing digital copies within moments. That’s because we complete all of the pre-press work on your file before sending you the proof. This way as soon as a proof is approved we can start production right away. Our production machines are hungry beasts and need to stay fed a steady stream of projects.
Next month we’ll review raster vs vector in more detail.