The ABC's of Press Checks

Anyone who's been disappointed in how his catalog looks as it rolls out of the printing plant on its way to the mail house knows that certain sinking feeling: The sales tool you labored over might well fail to impress customers and prospects — and therefore might well fail to do its job. Contributing to the feeling is a sense of a lack of control over the process in which your final proofs become your printed piece.

You can avoid that sinking feeling by knowing exactly what to check for the next time you're on a press check.

The devil's in the details

Understanding the details of a press run ahead of time will prepare you for a more successful press check and a more attractive catalog. Keeping color simple — for instance, avoiding black in background tints, so that you can run type dark against them without compromising the color — helps to keep the end result clean and also takes into account the way signatures run on a press.

The first detail you need to know is that the proofs you have from prepress are your bible on press. This is the only way you can tell if the catalog color is running accurately. You'll compare the sheets coming off the press against your prepress proofs, reviewing one spread at a time. To try to review them all in one huge span is impossible. And don't let anyone at the printer rush you — it's your money that's being spent on the print job, and it's up to you to get full value.

A catalog is printed in signatures of 8 or 16 flat pages; the size of the press determines the size of the signature. Those signatures are set up so that as the page is folded in half, then in half again, and sometimes in half yet again, those pages will nest together, to be easily “stitched” (stapled) and then trimmed. When the catalog is big enough, two or three or more signatures are nested together and then stitched before trimming.

Because a signature must run flat on a press, there are always at least two pages running “in line” with each other. If the color is perfect on the lower page but off on the upper page, you may need to compromise the color on the lower one to correct the upper page. This variation in color accuracy is due to the ink's being “used up” as the page runs through.

You will never see a catalog run where there is no color compromise. There is less now than there used to be, but it's still there. This is because of the multiple-page press sheet of the signature format.

Another issue you'll have to deal with for best quality on press is the confirmation of everything being in register. Color does not go on the press sheet in smooth sheets — it's actually printed using some kind of dot pattern, the type of which varies depending on the age of the printing press and the technology available to the printer.

The dot pattern will lay down at least four colors. The basics are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). Some printers run six and even eight inks to create richer color, but the majority of color printing you see is done CMYK. These inks combine in different quantities of dots to make up every color you see on a printed page.

At a press check, you'll be invited to examine the proofs through a loupe so that you can make sure that the color plates that transfer the ink to the press sheet were properly aligned to produce clean edges. Because printing technology has become so sophisticated during the past two decades, ensuring correct registration won't be as big a challenge as it used to be, but it is still an important step. If the color is out of register, it will never look as crisp and attractive as it should.

If it looks like the color is not in register, you must request that the printer check the registration. If the color just looks “down” or not as bright as the proofs you provided, it's up to you to ask the printer to get closer to the accuracy of the proof.

If you are very unhappy with what you see on press, you'll need to have a frank discussion with the printer to find out what the problem is. If the problem is mechanical, such as a problem with the printing blanket (the rubber-coated fabric attached to a cylinder that transfers the ink from the press plate onto the paper), you will need to request they stop the press to fix that problem. But a responsible printer will bring this sort of problem up before you do. This is why it's so important to know your printer by reputation and have confidence in the company's skills and honesty.

Other things to be on the lookout for include the paper — make sure the catalogs are being printed on the stock you've requested or understand why if it's not — and the bindery. Be sure that before you leave at the end of the press check, you have the printer make up a mockup from the printed sheets, hand-stapled, so that you can give it one last look to ensure that the signatures are in the correct order.

Waiting is half the fun

And hopefully, good things will come to you as you wait. When you attend a press check, be prepared to wait. And wait. And wait. And eat. And wait some more.

Take a laptop, a book, or some magazines, so that as the color is being refined, you'll have something to do while you wait to see new proofs. Most printers are set up to accommodate their clients' need to work while waiting and often have wireless Internet access in the waiting room.