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Upon the initial receipt of input materials selections are being made, and replacements of the ones being impossible to get reproduced well are advised and/or suggested. It is commonly the case with bad scans, photographs taken with 'El Cheapo' ;) digital cameras or downloaded from the internet. Other materials get processed and get into prepress stage(s).


Texts are lectored and corrected for the first time before the page flow. Different kinds of quotation marks are being removed along with double spaces and formattings except <bold> and <italic> marks, and extensive grammar corrections are performed. Thoroughly cleansed text gets into page flow of the shaped layout (formerly sent to a customer for modifications and initial approval) and e-mailed to authors at the same time for a review.

If the original logotypes in vector document format don't exist, new ones are being drawn out of input scans, or customers are asked to provide original logotypes. Standardized colours are estimated and calculated, so their mathematical values can be acknowledged and preserved through the whole process. The values of colours in the final document intended for imagesetting are to be identical to those specified in the input material. This is especially the case with logotypes, brands and colours specified in the Book of Visual Stardards, if of existance. At this point the proper prepress performance is crucial.


Photographs are processed by being retouched of damages, dirt dots, stains and scratches. The colour correction is made, with the accompanying selective sharpening or blurring and sizing to a desired resolution and dimensions. The quality of photographs is one of the basic conditions to a successful print publication.

Illustrative elements - tables, graphs, illustrations - are drawn into an adequate vector document format and the additional attention is paid to their shaping. Special operations of this type ensure the attractiveness to the smallest of details and top production quality.

Upon those steps completed, page flow itself is performed, where all previously prepared input materials get interpolated into layout. Now it's time for a reference PDF (Portable Document Format) document, sent to a customer for corrections, approval and signing.


After the customer's signed approval, final PS or PDF documents for imagesetting are produced and extensively preflighted and inspected to avoid prepress errors. Not a minute before it's properly technically verified and formatted to be well reproduced on a press, the document is 'burned' to a CD-ROM and delivered. But, we're not done yet ;)

Time for a calibrated proof print. In most case,s it is sufficient to make a proof of only one page per sheet side, yet more demanding publications get proofed at their full range of pages. The customers signs proofs and, if coming from a properly calibrated proofer, they serve as +/-10% accurate materials for print quality assesment and control.


If we are working on a multi-sheet publication (books, catalogues), we are asking the print house to make imposition mock-ups and dummies so we can additionally check the imposition. That goes as well for packaging - we need dummies to check the packaging dimensions and fitting.

After all of the additional verifications, the materials go to press. The described procedure is applied by all decent print houses and prepress studios performing the high quality print production.