send out to print
 

Hi everyone again. I have a question about a over the phone interview that I had yesterday. The position was for a graphic Designer and I'm not sure what the company was, they wouldn't tell me but i think they were a pretty big company. Anyway they were asking me question and one of them was if I knew how to send the files off to print at the off setters or something like that. I've never done that so i was confused. I've never worked in that kind of position i just went to school for Digital media and then stayed home with my Daughter.
So I was wondering if someone could give me in detail what you do after your done with a file, to send it out and who do you send it to. Also if there is any good book that someone could recommend. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!

Basically, they were asking you if you have any Prepress experience. After a designer is done with a layout, it will go off to a printer. The printer will want the files prepped for offset printing (i.e. CMYK, 300dpi, color-corrected, trapped, all fonts/graphics included). If the printer has to do too much work to prep the files for color-seperation, he will most likely either reject the files and send it back to the designer or attempt to prep the files himself and charge it back to the designer.

If you have no experience in this, don't try to wing it. Be upfront and honest and be ready to learn.

Dear Jennifer, the thing could be complicated, but it's really simple.

First, an art, ad, design or any other work that you can do, it's composed from 3 things: Photos, Graphics and Text.

If you are printing photos, a Minilab can use resolutions from 150 dpi (pixels per inch) to any other resolution you want. Someone told me the best for Minilab was 254 dpi. Also you can send JPG files for quick sending of TIF to get better quality (there are a bunch of formats, but those are the most common)

If you are printing photos only in a professional offset printer, you need to send them at 300 dpi, as for a Magazine.

If you are sending photos to a newspaper, you need to send them at 160 dpi.

All this dpi are acording to the final size of your photo. If you are sending a photo to 8x10" printing, then resize your document to the same size of course, then you use the dpi I told you.

If you are working with graphics and text, you can get better quality doing this in Illustrator, Indesign, Corel, or any other graphics program that you use, and then, you will have to ask to the printer in wich format he wish to get the files.

Keep the photos in the resolution (dpi) I told you, and the graphics and text will have a default of 1200 dpi for any format, that's pretty good quality always.

The most common file to send things to print the 3 things it's PDF.

First of all thank you for you help. It does seem overwelming yet simple at the same time. I do have a few more questions though. First what is Trapped? Second Correct me if I am wrong, but you save the file in a folder and included the orignal photo and corrected photo and the font folder (which is located in the programs files ).

I wouldn't take this position as most of the things you are asking are really the basics of print design.

Just my two cents

well they haven't called back yet anyway. I don't think they will because i have never did the programs indesign (?) and Puublisher. I was just curious thats all. Besides you have to learn sometime. My had bad teachers and they didn't teach us this.