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Prepress is one of the most complex and technically demanding computer-based businesses. As it is intended for preparing the materials for serial production, workflow errors or inadequate production can cause substantial financial expenses that, globally, have to be covered either by a customer or manufacturer.

Top-of-the-line technologies, utilized by the printing industry today, provide a high level of automatization and predictability, but only and exclusively with an adequately educated human factor handling them. Prepress knowledge is extremely important factor in print design, and depends hugely on personnel skills.

But a few years ago, prepress personnel was required to be able to handle the very basics of this highly demanding skill, which led to a large decrease in quality of printed materials. How many times have you heard or thought - aah, the way they used to print in the old days... No, it's just that human factor was more educated in the old days, and quality standards were much higher. The market demanded much more.

Mass popularization of the printing business, caused by computers entering the production, has led to a massive hyperproduction of a relatively unpredictable quality. 'White spaces' in text flow, bad hyphens with incorrect grammar, poorly processed or scanned photographs, incorrectly reproduced colours, printed materials delivered with correct printouts on top of the box and bad prints hidden at the bottom...

GCR, PostScript, PDF, DMax, Color Management, imposition, overprint... are some of the key idioms in the printing industry that, if and when produced by insufficiently trained personnel (or personnel caring too little), cause expensive problems in the print process. All of it leads to a fact that investor should be happy if his materials get printed well, with all the technology that industry brags about today.

On the other hand, it is often the case that materials were printed correctly, and turns out that errors came up during prepress, or that input materials entering into prepress were simply inadequate.

Photographs taken using cheap digital cameras, 'downloaded' from the internet or scanned on a cheap customer's scanner so he can save on scanning expenses, logotypes scanned from who knows how old magazines or catalogues instead of original vectorized ones, sending materials to print without colour proofs... to mention but a few problems.

Inadequate input materials shouldn't be put to prepress, let alone the printing process. They are to be replaced with an alternative.

Do not agree or ask for inferior solutions that sound like 'It's good, who will see' because it always turns not to be good, but the latter is usually manifested after a few thousand EUR's worth print runs are delivered.

Properly produced printed materials hold their value, and the badly produced ones follow you like a stench for a long time, whether you order or manufacture them. Do you really want that?