Features
Short run printing
Transferring your files
Getting a job from your Mac to the printer used to be a black art, often involving a prepress bureau in between. Today, short run printers are working hard to make it as easy as ordering your holiday snaps. One of the key technologies is Adobe's PDF (portable document format), which has established itself as the industry standard format for delivering jobs to printers.
Talk to six printers about PDF, however, and you'll get six different opinions. Everydayprint (everydayprint.co.uk) accepts print jobs through a simple web interface, and has chosen to work only with PDFs. 'We've come from a software development background, not printing,' explains MD Jason Walker, 'so we have a fresh approach.' ClickClickPrint.com is another company aiming for 'a simple one-click online relationship,' as MD David Broadway describes it, although it's backed by a more conventional repro operation. 'Some time ago, it was necessary to have a strong relationship with your printer. With PDF, that's less important, because you don't have the same problems.'
Others aren't yet convinced. Cypher Digital's Paul Calland speaks for many printers when he says he's happy to accept PDFs, but problems are much easier to fix if customers supply the native application file, usually from QuarkXPress or InDesign, along with any image and font files. Although minor alterations can be made to a PDF, it's more realistic to regard it as a non-editable format. Nick Murray at Wellington Press concurs: 'With good people who use us regularly, PDF is fine, but we like to check things out and on a lot of stuff I prefer native files.' If your printer takes this view, and (like Wellingon Press) doesn't
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Well, there are a couple of pitfalls. When you send application files, you risk font or image files being left out, and the job being held up as a result. If you're not exporting to PDF, you may also find yourself skipping the 'preflight' stage, checking that, for example, all images have been converted to CMYK, no links are broken, and no dodgy fonts have been used. Again, this may mean the printer can't output the job or charges you extra for fixing it up.
'We like PDF because it makes our life easier,' says e-digiprint boss Andy Stevens. 'Our RIP [raster image processor, the software that prepares documents for press] flies through them, both with the Xerox and CTP. Half the time we don't even talk to customers - they send it, we print it, we dispatch it.' His theory: 'the key is keeping our RIP and applications up to date.'
Another factor is that printers themselves aren't always very good at advising customers on creating PDFs. Ideally, your printer would supply the exact settings to use. In practice, you're more likely to be offered general guidelines or just told to choose 'prepress' or 'high resolution'. This is no guarantee of success.
Helen Johnson, an account director with Guerilla Communications (guerilla.co.uk), recently voted North East Marketing Services Agency of the Year, is losing patience with vague specifications. 'They'll say, send us a PDF - but with what settings? We'll get the proof and there are transparency problems or whatever, and the PDFs can't be altered, so we have to sort it out. When you're on a fast turnaround, that relies on us working 24 hours as well as the printer.' James Sparling, a partner in London-based design and publishing company Lexographic (lexographic.co.uk), is also sceptical about the vision of push-button PDF printing. 'Short run often seems to mean short shrift. Because they're always so rushed, they don't get back to you about things, they just try and get it out. PDF can be safer in some ways, but when you ask about settings the most you can get out of them is "Do what you normally do." Then it all goes wrong and they say, "Well, we're not really set up for PDF 1.4, you should have used 1.3...".'
