Craft

A working print production timeline

Print jobs stall when "print-ready" is treated as a slogan instead of a checklist. The sequence below is the one most commercial jobs still follow, whether the press is offset or a digital engine.

A letterpress machine in a small print shop

After the layout is approved, the file has to become a mechanical that a printer can output. That usually means a PDF with bleed, crop marks, and fonts either embedded or converted to outlines, and with images at a resolution the press can hold. RGB photographs that look fine on a screen often need a defined CMYK or library colour conversion before plates or a digital run. The printer should say which profile they expect. Guessing is how a red logo shifts on press.

A typical sequence looks like this:

Approved layout and copy, including legal lines that will actually print.
Prepress: bleed (often 3 mm unless the printer specifies otherwise), trim, fonts, image resolution, and colour.
A proof. A soft proof on a calibrated screen is common for digital work. A contract proof is still used when colour has to match a known standard. The proof should be checked against the same text and measurements as the mechanical, rather than against a memory of the layout.
Plates, or a digital output file, once the proof is signed.
A press check if the job is colour-critical or if the sheet includes a large flat tint that is hard to hold.
Bindery and finishing: trim, fold, stitch, or bind, then packing.
Delivery to the address on the insertion order or the distribution list, by the date on the schedule.

The phrase "supplied print-ready PDF" should mean that the items in the prepress line have already been done. If a file arrives without bleed, with missing fonts, or with a typographic correction still pending, it is not print-ready, and the schedule should be adjusted rather than hoped through.

Letterpress, offset, and digital engines do not share every constraint, but they share this one: the finishing date is fixed by the insertion or the event, and every earlier step has to count back from that date with a margin for a corrected proof.