The Art of Business: Prescription for Prepress
I don’t know what it is about Petaluma, California, but as Gene Gable so aptly described in his previous column, there seems to be a surfeit of publishing and graphic art types who live here — Gene and myself included. I think it’s because we’re all left-handed rebels who much prefer the rolling hills and vineyards of Sonoma County to the duplexes and office parks of Adobe and Apple country some 70 miles to the south or the limited parking of San Francisco’s multimedia gulch.
One of these people is Sam Smith. After years as a prepress consultant and guru of sorts, Sam spent the late 1990s in the Internet world. Following the dot-com flame out, Smith was drawn back to print by the appeal of Apple’s new OS X and the Macintosh’s long history of digital graphics.
In 2002, he assembled a small network of Macs and Intel hardware running Unix, high-end monitors, and proofing devices, and spent the year in isolation studying color-managed workflows. Now he takes his knowledge on the road, consulting for printers and prepress service providers who want to take full advantage of OS X, other Unix systems, and color-managed PDF workflows. He and his wife, a graphic designer, have also opened ArrayMedia, a graphic arts and marketing company.
Sam is outspoken about the industry and its players, and recently I had the chance to sit down him and hear his thoughts on InDesign, QuarkXPress}, OS X, and the state of prepress and printing today.
CP: Sam, You’re back into the prepress world after several years away. What’s changed?
SS: In the ’90s I had mastered QuarkXPress and loved it. But like many others, I was off in the dot-com world for a few years away from prepress. During those years, I deluded myself into thinking everyone had switched to InDesign because they wanted to use Apple’s terrific new OS like I did.
I was stunned at the icy stares I received when I so proudly handed off my first process color brochure job to the prepress department at the printer. “Do you really like InDesign? Even Adobe knows it doesn’t work,” the printer confided in me. “No guarantees, see you later,” he said.
Next I tried converting my job to PDF before I sent it off to print hoping they wouldn’t know it came from InDesign. “Did you follow the instructions on our Web page?” they huffed when they checked my PDF and couldn’t figure out how I’d created it. I had used the latest version, 6.0, of Acrobat and Distiller and there were no instructions for any other version but Acrobat 5. Finally I was told to “save as EPS” so they could place my job in QuarkXPress 4.11.
To my surprise XPress 4.11, released in 1997, was still the standard. Had the prepress world gone mad while I was away? Why had the industry ignored the possibilities for higher quality printing using a color-managed workflow? Why had it not jumped for joy with the money saving efficiency that Adobe’s new software offered? Why hadn’t they embraced the advancements in PDF file formats making handing off files destined for the printing press nearly foolproof?
CP: Good questions, why hasn’t prepress made the transition?
SS: After more than 10 years of making the difficult switch from conventional prepress (remember Rubylith, light tables and razor blades), it seems modern prepress was still fighting every advancement. In one sense, it’s understandable: Printers and production artists exist in the real world, that is to say they have to make money. It is expensive to produce printed goods, budgets are typically slim, and turn around times usually lack any such luxury as slack for experimenting with new processes. So the grind goes on, jobs are late and with one mistake the profits go out the window. No time and no budgets to learn or apply better techniques.
CP: But not everyone has had the same experience, and lots of designers and printers have moved, or are moving, to PDF.
SS: When I went ranting on the online forums I was flamed for questions like, “why is prepress stuck in 1997 with XPress 4.11.” Several replies to my posts where answered with amazement at the bad experience I had. Some who replied to my posts in the forums stated that where they live, the majority of printers accepted PDF files — even preferred them.
But then I searched on the Adobe Web site for Adobe Partners in the Adobe Solution Network (for “printers in the greater San Francisco Bay Area with presses of any size using a computer platform that supports InDesign.) The search came back with only nine results, out of what must be hundreds if not thousands of printers in the region.
CP: So what’s it going take for a change to occur?
SS: I was there in the early ’90s when we dragged the industry away from the stripping departments. “That silly Macintosh will never replace us skilled craftsman,” they said, as we watched the light tables go dim one by one.
There was one very different element to the migration from conventional prepress to digital prepress and that was the interim step made through the service bureau — now all but an extinct entity. One day shortly after the debut of PageMaker 1.0, printers began to notice their customers were walking through the front door with film rather than boards. Soon printers had to relent and go in house with their own digital prepress departments to regain the revenue lost to the service bureaus.
We don’t have the service bureaus this time, but we do have the major print buyers forging a path. Companies like Macy’s are the 500-pound gorillas. In my research, I have discovered that Macy’s West, which is Macy’s in-house art and advertising department with over 200 production people, is using state-of-the-art software and hardware. That means they’re giving their print and advertising suppliers either color managed InDesign files or color managed PDF files from InDesign.
CP: What’s your prediction, then, for the print and prepress industries?
SS: A very large percent of the businesses that call themselves “printers” or “prepress service providers” will be gone within a few years. Those that are most endangered are those that tend to say “no” the most. That includes saying “no” to:
- PDF workflows;
- Anything other than CMYK + spot color;
- Anything other than Type 1 single master fonts;
- Anything other than from a Macintosh:
- Content from “enterprise programs” (i.e., Office);
- Content other than from professional layout programs other than QuarkXPress.
The writing is on the wall, and prepress service providers and printers that want to remain in business need to start making the transition today or they won’t be around tomorrow.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on October 27, 2003
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