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Digital print workflow
The entire process for the production of a printed document can be broken-down into
three phases: prepress (which includes all steps after the design is completed up to the
point where the job is printing), press or printing (the printing phase), and postpress or
finishing (all the steps required to finish the job after printing and before distribution).
Digital printing has greatly simplified two of these phases: prepress and press.
For an understanding of how digital printing has streamlined the production of printed
documents, it’s useful to compare it with the workflow associated with traditional offset
printing. The following discussion greatly simplifies the entire production process, but is
sufficient to highlight the major steps involved in each workflow. (See diagram page 1-4)
Document creation
The first step in the production of a printed document requires the creation of a design.
A concept is developed into a layout, followed by the preparation of text (writing,
editing, font selection and typesetting) and artwork and images (which can include
electronic illustrations, scanned photographs, digital camera shots or stock library
images). The document is then ready to be created, generally using a page assembly
program to combine the text and image elements.
Computers, software and digital technologies have already revolutionised the creation of
documents. Typesetting (the assembly of type into words and lines) used to be done by
hand. Illustrations were created by hand and photographs were always film-based. The
assembly of these text and image elements was a manual process, called pasteup, with
the end result being a camera-ready copy. Today, almost all documents are created
electronically, totally eliminating the need for these time-consuming and error-prone
manual processes.
Prepress
Once a document is created, it can be proofed (proofing is a simulation of how the job
will look when it is printed).
If you are having your job printed on a DocuColor 2045 or 2060, you can also run a
proof on the press which will show you how the job will look when it is run. This is
called a “press proof” (because it is proofed on the actual press) and will show you
exactly how the job will look when it’s printed.
If you are printing on a traditional offset press, a proof at this stage will only
approximate what the final result will look like. Fonts may look different (because
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digital print