What Is Prepress?

Prepress technology refers to the process involved before printing on the machine, mainly including computer graphic design and desktop publishing.

Prepress technology

(printing art)

Complete printing process.

In fact, with the development of personal computer technology, it quickly became popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Image scanning

Packaging is an important part of the printing and publishing industry. From a worldwide perspective, packaging products account for 20% of all printed products, and are growing at an annual growth rate of 5%. In Asia, the proportion of products is 29% and has a growth rate of 7%, which is twice the world's average growth rate. Due to the use of different forms of substrates, such as paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, and glass ^[1] , packaging printing is different. At the same time, in packaging printing, various shapes of products need to be printed. A variety of die-cutting and post-processing techniques are also used in the final forming of labels, boxes and paper bags. In practice, we call the stage between the creative design process driven by the currency field and the production process driven by benefits, called the prepress process. The packaging prepress process has two important functions. First, we must strive to transform creative designs into matching mass-produced tools, such as printing plates and die-cutting boards, in the shortest possible time. All quality, branding and requirements must meet end-user or customer satisfaction. Second, the different characteristics and complexity of the production process must be taken into account to ensure consistent results every time in repeated and off-site production processes. At present, in the packaging market, there are several important development trends that are causing changes in prepress technology: First, the consumer market is becoming increasingly fierce, and rapidly changing consumer products are constantly competing for their own development space. Therefore, manufacturers change packaging design more frequently in order to gain market initiative. The design cycle has been shortened to a few days, and the production cycle of packaging products has become shorter and shorter. Secondly, with the continuous innovation of materials science, printing technology and production technology, it has also brought about the development and development of production tools and processes. Therefore, the need to strengthen collaboration across the supply chain continues to grow, not only to gain profits, but also to meet the needs of globalization. Again, since all the packaging designs used desktop software, such as Adobe IIIUStrator. But these softwares lack effective cutting power to complete design tasks efficiently. With the development of desktop system software technology, both designers and customers believe that PDF will be the perfect data conversion format. However, some important packaging design elements will be lost in the PDF, so it is not suitable for expressing complex packaging designs. For this reason, the software specially developed for packaging before printing provides functions for packaging technology. Among them, the most well-known is the trapping function and the ability to handle spot colors and custom inks, such as the amount of ink and printing data Measurement, etc. At present, adding anti-counterfeiting elements to packaging design to prevent counterfeiting and copying is becoming a new hot spot in the currency market. In reality, in addition to paying attention to image processing, it is also necessary to coordinate and take into account the parallel processes between the end customer and the producer, such as the design of packaging box structure, die cutting, scrapping and other subsequent processes. The packaging designer very much hopes that the newly developed design software system can realize the perfect combination of box design and images, be able to preview in three dimensions, and even preview the actual placement of boxes on the shelf. Shown in production, it can achieve direct color inkjet proofing of carton and carton. Through the combination of CAD and graphic design, the same product can be produced on a box prototype. Packaging printers must not only consider individual labels and packaging in actual production, but also consider groups of the same or different designs. Generally, these individual labels and packages are imposed using a conventional copying machine, and they must be placed in the same position as the die-cut position of the die-cut plate used after printing. Due to the advent of large format laser imagesetters, the digital plate-making process can be completed directly in the prepress section, and then the soft sheet output by the large format laser imagesetter is used to print on the plates. At present, with the emergence of direct plate-making equipment on the market, the intermediate quality of film is no longer needed, and direct plate-making can be performed, which has obvious advantages for packaging production. First, the design center can send data to different print ends in any data format. Secondly, the film is omitted, the time for making plates is reduced, and the printing cycle is greatly shortened. Third, you can make fuller use of printing plates and avoid possible errors in printing. While the direct plate-making equipment replaces the combined exposure equipment, with the support of appropriate color management software, high-quality inkjet printers have been able to simulate the final printing product effect. In addition, for packaging companies, the ideal front-end for direct platemaking is acceptable on the one hand for image design in one or more different industry standard formats; on the other hand, it also accepts group printing sheets from CAD systems. Under normal circumstances, the design that the customer has already signed or the same version as the die-cut version cannot be changed. However, there are special cases, such as: adjusting printed images to different printing plates, adding printing control bars and post-processing marks, and adding production control and tracking information as a whole. A direct platemaking process should require a matching prepress system control, which can plate different image designs together with corresponding knife lines. This flexibility is for those who need shorter production cycles to match shorter delivery times. Necessary for fast circulation of goods. Direct-to-plate imaging equipment can be used for both offset and flexographic printing (nothing new for gravure digital printing). In packaging printing, direct offset plate-making equipment was first applied. At the same time, special requirements for packaging printing must be noted. Regarding the choice of plate materials, it is believed that in the near future, thermal plate materials will dominate the long-run printing. The thermal plate plate has a higher print resistance rate and has good adaptability to spot color inks. The UV laser-sensitive plate is suitable for short-run printing and small batch production, such as trademark printing. The rapid development is digital platemaking applied to flexographic printing. The surface of the standard resin plate used is coated with a thin dissolving layer. A powerful laser source exposes the dissolving layer according to the data to form a negative image. . Currently, the flexo direct plate making equipment on the market can support a variety of plates and large production volumes, including direct imaging on the sleeve and plate on the sleeve. We hope that digital printing will be gradually introduced. The key issue is how to digest the higher stringent costs at the beginning by providing users with high value-added products. The latest printing trends will not only affect packaging prepress production, but also the entire packaging production chain. Consumable suppliers in developed countries have established many open associations in order to improve efficiency and reduce the cost of the production chain, and they are setting standards for collaboration, communication and coordination throughout the process. There is no doubt that the exchange of data worldwide will take place via the Internet. This integrated packaging product production chain will affect all aspects, packaging manufacturers must study new strategies to meet user needs, expand support for all customers, and form new competitive advantages. There are many aspects of interaction between packaging manufacturers and their users and collaborators. This is a creative process. Some are internal and some are with users. At the same time, it is also an evaluation, creating a production environment with a close connection between planning and order management. All these activities have one thing in common: centering on product and production instructions and precise management of design, prepress production and production from different systems. It can be seen that the future packaging world requires that most information be processed directly by the WEB, so as to achieve safe and accurate processing.

Has started to develop web-based software for production environments: selecting from the design library, making detailed adjustments, cost estimates, image management, review control and approval processes, order and reorder management, production process tracking ... and more All these functions will be implemented soon and applied to packaging production practice.