Preparing pages for a print shop - Tutorial

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1992 by Steve Morgenstern

It's Easy to Work with The Pros When You Follow These Steps

Desktop publishing is rarely "publishing" at all. Publishing is getting the word out, spreading the news, making your viewpoints known--all of which means producing your work in quantity for distribution. Until you make it public, it hasn't been published. In fact, publish comes from the Latin word publicus, meaning "public."

That bit of classical linguistics leads us to a classic problem for budding desktop publishers-how to prepare appropriate materials for reproduction by a commercial print shop. Sometimes you can just hand the print shop a page direct from the laser printer and leave it at that, and other times you might be able to hand over a computer file on disk. However, there's often more to the process. Let's look at what a print shop needs to reproduce your pages, and what you must do to provide it.

ARE YOU CAMERA-READY?

As I said, sometimes your page layout can go fight to the print shop with no additional work. That holds true if:

* all of the type and artwork are already in place and ready to be shot by the printer's camera; and

* there are no special instructions about individual elements on the page; and

* the finished page size will be the same as the laser-printed page and any page numbering is already included within the page layout itself, or the finished page size is small enough to let you include crop marks on the laser-printed page; and

* you're not planning to hand the same output to a printer again; and

* there's no client involved in approving the final output; and

* the print shop has no real objection to working with your unmounted materials.

If all of that applies to your situation, then the sheets that come from your laser printer (or from the imagesetter service bureau if you've opted for high-resolution output) can be delivered as camera-ready repro to the print shop. It's camera-ready because it will be reproduced exactly as it is: The print shop uses a specialized large-format camera to take a picture of the material you provide and prints from that photographic image. It's called repro because it's used for reproduction purposes.

If any of the conditions listed above don't apply to your situation, then camera-ready repro isn't enough--you'll have to provide a camera-ready mechanical. A mechanical is a piece of white board with the elements of your page pasted precisely in their final positions. In fact, mechanicals are sometimes referred to as boards, and the process of creating them is called paste-up.

A MOUNTING DILEMMA

Simply mounting a complete page produced by the computer on a board makes it less susceptible to folding, tearing, crumpling, and myriad other mutilations. To ward off smudges and fingerprints, a sheet of tracing paper is often attached to the top edge of the mechanical with wide masking tape, creating an overlay called a tissue. For even more protection on a small job (a half-page ad, for instance), you might add another sheet of thin board or thick paper on top of the tissue.

The board used for mechanicals can vary widely. It must have a coated white surface, but the thickness can range from a thin, flexible board (similar to oak tag) to a thicker bristol board. You can also buy boards with blue ruling lines especially for mechanicals.

Imagesetter output is actually a photographic process as well. The type from an imagesetter won't smear, and the paper itself is coated with resin to keep adhesives from penetrating the surface. If you'll be using laser-printed pages as camera-ready proofs, consider buying a special paper that provides some of the advantages of resin-coated imagesetter output. I've been satisfied with Hammermill's Laser Plus paper. It has an extra-bright white color for maximum contrast and a special coating to resist adhesive damage. The best special-purpose laser paper I've tried is LaserGloss from mail-order supplier Paper Direct ([800] 2727377). LaserGloss costs roughly four times more than the Hammermill paper, but it produces exceptional results for the job.

You have several choices when selecting adhesives for attaching materials to the boards. I use rubber cement, which is available in two varieties: two-coat (which must be applied to both the board and the material to be pasted down) and one-coat (just glue up the item to be attached). One-coat is harder to find but easier to use. You'll also want rubber-cement thinner, which lets you unglue a piece to reposition it, and a pick-up, which you rub around the edges of pasted-down material to pick up any extra glue that has spread out onto the board. A roller with a plastic cylinder is also helpful for ensuring a flat surface and overall adhesion of your type elements.

Spray mount in an aerosol can is another popular adhesive, though not the most environmentally sound option. I find it inconvenient to apply (the can spritzes a wide area) and tacky rather than gluey (that is, lacking permanence)--but many professionals love the stuff. One major caveat, whether you're using rubber cement or spray mount: Work in a well-ventilated area. Both glues contain chemicals whose fumes pose long-term health hazards.