The site for prepress & print devotees

a rectangular solid line or pattern that is added to a press sheet and trimmed away after printing. It helps equalize ink-laydown on the sheet by extending and evening out the printed area, thus avoiding ink starvation in any one place.

Prepressure covers design techniques, PDF, PostScript, fonts, JDF and numerous other prepress topics that have to do with printed communication and graphic arts. This site teams up with B4Print.com, the favorite stake-out of many prepress professionals who regularly visit its forums.

More memory

Clients from hell is often funny as hell.

“I tried downloading more RAM, but now my computer won’t work.”

Follow us on Twitter

The local village idiot, also known as Prepress Pete, has been on Twitter for quite some time now. Since he cannot be relied on for any serious messaging, there is now an official prepressure.com Twitter account. If you’re serious about prepress and would like to know when new content appears on this site, please follow us. If you are somewhat less serious, consider following Pete.

Hey, people still read books

During a summer visit to the beautiful Selexyz Dominicanen book store I shot some abstract pictures. Have a look at my moiré shot or this living proof that some people actually still read books. 

Prepress Pete is tweeting

Saw a #web2print tweet on creating ‘a printready PDF file compatible with RGB and CMYK color printing’. We better stock up on RGB inks NOW!

A look back at 2012

Drupa, Benny Landa, Kodak’s bankruptcy and the cloud – they all get mentioned in my review of the year 2012 in graphic arts.

There is no such thing as paper money

Learned from an EFI tweet: US currency is a fabric that consists of 25% linen and 75% cotton. I already knew money wasn’t printed on paper. I just never realized it was that similar to underwear!

The 2013 color of the year

Since 2000 Pantone annually declares a particular color “Color of the Year”. I’ve added this little trivia fact to the pages on the history of prepress.

The poll: How does your company promote itself?

An article in PrintWeek on how to advertise your company for free reminded me that it would make sense to run a poll about the way companies promote themselves.

New terms in the dictionary

Ghost bar – A ghost bar of take-off bar is a rectangular solid line or pattern that is added to a press sheet and trimmed away after printing. It helps equalize ink-laydown on the sheet by extending and evening out the printed area, thus avoiding ink starvation in any one place.
American Quarto – Outside of North America the ‘Letter‘ page size is known as ‘American Quarto’.
Weeding – The process of removing excess vinyl on peel-and-stick vinyl stickers.
Adshel – A poster that is integrated into the structure of a bus shelter.
FSC and PEFC – Certificates which guarantee that the wood pulp used to produce paper is from sustainably managed forests.

What’s new?

New or reworked pages on drupa, A8, abstracts, 2012, thermography, printing in the 18th century, photochrome prints, selecting a prepress workflow, PDF/VT, the adoption rate of QR codes, Apple Color Emoji and various dictionary terms.

Other prepress & print related sites

- B4Print - the prepress forum for people who like going off-topic once in a while.
- The Print Guide – Gordo’s guidelines to achieve better quality in print.
- InDesignSecrets – The podcasts are even better than the site.

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