Technical instructions | Rotografika

SPECIFICATION FOR PREPRESS AND BASIC PRODUCTION STANDARDS

In order to assure the PDFs are well prepared, we would like to refresh the instructions on their proper development and manner of sending.
We find of a great importance the meaning of preparations to be understood as an integral part in the line of product development, because the quality of prepress not only means a good print but also the quality of product production in all other phases.

Monitor calibration

First of all, it is very important that your work environment is ready for the making of preparations for printing, which means that the monitor is properly calibrated and the ICC preparation profile that matches the printing surface is selected. Otherwise, while processing, the colour on the monitor will not match the print. ICC profiles in the printing house "Rotografika" are not used and are not necessary to be written with the PDF. As such, they serve exclusively for the monitor as an emulation of preparation on the appropriate surface.

Application of standards and making test prints

Within its production process, the printing house “Rotografika” is managed by the ISO standard 12647 which was adopted by the German Institute for Research of Graphic Technology FOGRA named "PSO - Process Standard Offset". The standard for the preparation of certified proofings "FograCert Contract Proofing" was also adopted, popularly called the "Bests" and which can be made for each client. Proofs – BESTS give the closest look to what will be printed in the press, so as they serve as a designer guide, they after the client’s approval serve as a guide to the typewriter who is on the machine. If there are no bests present on the machine to be used as a guide for imprinting, then the press takes place with pre-established standard coating. It is very important to note that the light on the desks of printing machines is also compliant with ISO standard 12647 and emulates daylight. More information on the website www.fogra.org

Display on different types of lightning. The presentation presented at the DRUPA Fair in Germany 2016

Electronic approval

All of our clients are offered the possibility of electronic page approval via the Internet. If you are interested, you will receive instructions and parameters for access from our CTP operators. You can download the instructions on the following page yourself: https://apogee.agfa.net/Resources/Help/WebApproval-10.0-OLH-en-US/index.html

Electronic approval is enabled in a modern and very simple program of the world-famous manufacturer Agfa.

Material format

In the printing house "Rotografika", exclusively documents in PDF format are used. Everything else will be ignored and will not be used as prepress for printing. The PDF version should be 1.3 (Acrobat 4.0 compatible). If for any reason there is a necessity for another PDF version, we recommend versions 1.6 or 1.7. The PDF version does not affect the quality of processed preparation; it only has to do with the way the PDF document is configured, as well as with the RIP, where the PDF is later processed for printing. Please make sure that one document contains one page to avoid errors that could occur when installing and possibly changes regarding pages. We recommend creating PDF documents via the Export Option. Production from the postscript can only be applied if it is impossible from export or because of some other problems.

Imprint resolution and quality

The resolution of photographs for quality imprinting should be 300 dpi. The minimum resolution acceptable for lower quality imprints is 140 dpi and the maximum is 600 dpi. Any below 140 dpi is unacceptable for a quality imprint, while resolutions that are more than 600 dpi can question the proper operation of RIP software and the overall possibility of production of the press releases. The 1-bit photo resolution must not exceed 2400 dpi.

Display of a fixed pixel number in relation to different resolutions

All documents must be in CMYK, more precisely - Device CMYK or Device GREY. The objects in the Device RGB, Calibrated RGB and Lab must be converted to CMYK before they are imported into a document to be processed, that is, before the PDF is created. All colours of the image in the RGB can only be seen on the monitor screen, while certain colours cannot be reproduced in the print. In order for colours to be correctly printed they must be transferred to CMYK or otherwise the image you did not imagine will appear on the proof, that is, it will be different from what is on the monitor screen. The SPOT colours must be properly named after the PANTON scale with the defined CMYK percentage of the scale. If the product does not contain Panton colours or other so-called the fifth spot colour, all colours in the document should be converted to CMYK. If the document contains objects defined as different Panton colours, therefore different names but the same CMYK values, and it is necessary to convert them to the CMYK in the RIP software, otherwise the document will not be processed.

The text in a PDF document has to be embedded, that is, when creating a PDF document "embed" option in the settings must be turned on. Otherwise, documents cannot be used as the fonts are not imported into a PDF document and even though we see them on the screen, they do not actually exist in that document. Also in some programs for prepress preparation, there is an option "subset" that must be set at 100% to avoid replacing the letter type or font in a PDF document. All texts that are in black colour and smaller than 24 typographical points must be defined only as 100% black (K = 100%, C = 0, M = 0, Y = 0). It is unnecessary for the text to contain other colours from CMYK; even the existence of these colours would greatly violate the print quality, that is, the appearance of the product itself. If the black text crosses a tone or any other object it is necessary to include overprint option in this text in the prepress process. Overprint is applied only to 100% black text and by no means in white text because otherwise these elements will not be shown in the final product. This also applies to other elements that cross the second tone (with the overprint colour option enabled, colours mix while printing). Black text that is larger than 24 points can be made from multiple colours per recipe for the so-called deep black (see in the next section).

The page format in PDF must be properly given and centred on the document page. Preferably, the PDF document should also contain the cutting marks on the final format - crop marks, and all other markings are unnecessary. It is very important that marks are distanced for the bleed size from the final format. Each page must contain the bleed not less than 3 mm on all sides, and that all objects (images or tones) that are coming to the final cutting lines or the final format of products to be left over for sizing the bleed. The text and important elements need to be distanced from the final format at the least 3 mm in order not to get cut off at the end phase of product production. For products that have a small format, multi-page saddle stitched products, bleed must be at the minimum of 5 mm and the text with important elements must be distanced from the final format for 5 mm. In milled/trimmed or binding, the production area between the cover and the first page of the book will be glued in 5 mm, and it should be taken into account that there are no important elements and texts in this area. If an image is on the side of the cover that transitions to the first side of the book signatures, the so-called "spread", regarding the loss of 1 cm in a binding (5 mm from the part of the cover and 5 mm from the part of the first page of the book signatures) it is necessary to move the cover part for 5 mm left, and the first page of the book signature for 5 mm to the right.

For each page of the cover, it is necessary to create a separate PDF with the cover page, if there is one, to be connected with the spine in the bleed. From this point of view, the spine is for example 5 mm so the bleed in the document should be set to 5 mm, and while constructing the PDF, be sure to set the bleed to 5 mm, and the crop marks for the cut must be distanced for 5 mm.

Cover with flaps

Sketch of the inside flap of paperback magazine:

Production of the book cover

Refer to the drawings

flat spine

rounded spine

The measure for the cover with the rounded spine is different from the flat one only in the width of the cardboard.

integral book cover

Creating the book jacket

The edge size depends on the customer’s request – usually 3mm

Size in total:

- Width = 2 x width of the book block + 2 x edge + 2 x thickness of the cardboard + 2 x flap + spine

- Height = height of the book block + 2 x edge

Refer to the drawing:

If the page contains large black surfaces and the so-called effect of deep black needs to be achieved, besides 100% black colour, it is enough to leave 70% cyan, 60 magenta and 60% yellow for the coated paper, and for the uncoated paper C 50% M 40% Y 40% and K 100%. Each percentage more is unnecessary and has no effect; actually it even makes printing process difficult and reduces the print quality. Regarding the fact, it is important, if there is a white text over the mentioned surface, the font size of the text should not be too small because a small and thin text, especially if it is in the negative, on the black surface composed from multiple colours cannot be printed in a quality manner. It is proper that the one-colour text is not less than 6 typographical points, that is, 7 typographical points for serif letters. For multi-colour text and text in the negative (white text on black surface) the smallest size is 8 typographical points and 10 typographical points for serif letters. The minimum thickness of the line that can be properly reproduced into 100% tone is 0.2 points or 0.07 mm, and the minimum thickness for lines in the raster is 0.5 points or 0.18 mm. Lines in multiple colours and lines in the negative must not be thinner than 0.75 points or 0.27 mm.

One of the key factors in making quality prepress is the total colour sediment on the pages, the so-called “Area of Total Ink Coverage" or TAC. The maximum colour sediment is got as the sum of the percentage of which the colour can be made. In this manner, 100% of all the primary colours in CMYK is 400% (cyan 100% + magenta 100% + yellow 100% + black 100% = 400%). The surface with such a large number of layers of colours violates the quality of the print and its drying. The drying quality depends on the time period of drying as well as the type and quality of the printed surface. In order to avoid print quality decline due to large number of colour layers, the maximum percentage of total sediments is determined according to paper types:

TYPE	TAC	PROFILE
Coated papers	300 %	PSOcoated_v3.icc
LWC Improved papers	300 %	PSO_LWC_improved_eci.icc
LWC Standard papers	300 %	PSO_LWC_standard_eci.icc
Uncoated offset papers	300 %	PSO_uncoated_v3_FOGRA52eci.icc
MFC papers	280 %	PSOmfc_paper_eci.icc
SC papers	270 %	SC_paper_eci.icc
Newsprint	260 %	PSO_SNP_paper_eci.icc

Table: TAC based on paper type and corresponding ICC profile. All ICC profiles from the table can be found at www.eci.org/en/downloads

We recommend that after saving the prepress in the PDF document review it again before sending, both visually and if possible by using the corresponding so-called “pre-flight”. Proper is to visually review PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Professional, with enabled "Output Preview" option in CMYK, selected appropriate ICC profile if the colours are controlled as well (required calibrated monitor) and enabled overprint simulation.

Prepress for varnishing, die cut, emboss, foilstamp and other refinement stages in the document must be in a special channel, that is, spot colour with enabled overprint option and it is desirable to be on a separate PDF document.

In order to have a well-prepared base for addressing, please comply with the following rules:

Font reduced to 8 typographical points,
Clean the entire base of YU letters or all letters containing an umlaut (strictly use the English keyboard, that is, letters of English alphabet),
Use upper case letters to input data into the cell,
Use only one type of font, without any additional characters such as quotation marks, etc.
The cell must not contain more than 40 characters,
At the postcode column, check if there are only numbers in the cell. If there are any letters they must be removed.

Order of the columns is the following:

Catalogue number
Company name
Name and surname
Address
City
Postcode number

Example:

The responsibility of each user is to name and appoint files and folders in accordance to the given instructions in order to avoid the wrong download. It is recommended that each client in the printing house owns its personal spot on the FTP server at "Rotografika". When uploading on the FTP server, it is necessary to inform CTP operators by phone or e-mail. This notification is very important if the prepress corrections are sent subsequently, that is, new files, in order to avoid new files not be downloaded after the initial prepress has already been downloaded.

Folders

The folder needs to be opened for each publication separately. Indicate the name of the publication, edition number and date.

PUBLICATION _NUMBER _DATE

Files

While creating files, be sure to follow these rules:

Each page must be separately recorded in one file,
Each file in its name must contain the number of its pagination (01.pdf, etc.),
In the case of printing covers separately, make sure they are marked with K1, K2, K3 and K4,
If the cover is to be printed from the books block (not separately), start labelling from 01.pdf,

Please do not use YU letters during the naming/labelling or other letters with umlauts or ticks, as well as characters! " # $ % & / ( ) { } ; ' , . / <> ? etc.

Uploading on the server

All the files necessary for printing must be in the named folder. The files must not be in separate folders unless they are arranged by reels. Out of folder files will not be downloaded. FTP server, as well as user folders, must not be used for other purposes. It is necessary to find exclusively files required for printing in the folders. If separate files for Best-Proof are placed on the server, do it in a special open folder called BEST_PROOF.

Uploading new pages or editing

If the file has to be replaced for any reason, it should be copied to the same folder with a new name as 01_New.pdf. The transcription of the previously uploaded file is administratively disabled. It is mandatory to notify CTP operators about the new upload.

Download

The files will be downloaded from the server after their proper upload and written consent for printing. The files will be processed and reviewed only after the CTP department receives an order for the production of a publication. After copying, the publication folder name will be changed with the added _SKINUTO (DOWNLOADED) at the end.

PUBLICATION_ NUMBER_ DATE_ SKINUTO

After this, the user must not upload files in the folder.

Maintenance

Your FTP folder is located on our server. Use it carefully, follow the instructions, and do not place files that are not required for printing.

We are looking forward this will position us to achieve even better and more quality relationship, to the mutual satisfaction.

Best regards,
„Rotografika“