form of repair—has gone down, not up.
There are plenty of reasons behind the trend. Certainly, fewer companies are turning to professional prepress suppliers for help in making good files, and as result, fewer customers are capable of supplying Shorewood Packaging with a standardized file format such as TIFF/IT-P1.
These days, the manufacturer receives a wider array of digital file formats, including PDFs and native application files. "I would say that the files we're getting have got
ten worse. It also has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of people who are creating the files aren't necessarily trained with the pressroom in mind," Blakistone remarks.
"I really feel like there's a throw-away attitude about files," Blakistone suggests. "In the old days, when you went to film, it was so expensive, you'd better be darned sure it was right."
To catch problematic files as soon as they arrive from the customer, Shorewood Packaging deploys x v Santa Ana, CA-based Markzware's (www.markzware.com) FlightCheck Professional, a standalone preflight application capable of adjudicating files in an array of formats, including accredited standards and garden-variety native application files.
Running all incoming files through the application enables Shorewood's prepress team to catch any potential problems—minor or major. If fonts haven't been embedded or there's an errant RGB image, the manufacturer alerts the customer, who may choose to have Shorewood repair the file or will make the fix in-house and resubmit a new file.
Good files—those that pass the preflight inspection—are fed into the prepress RIP and a soft PDF proof is created. Blakistone says that soft proofing is a win-win for Shorewood and its customers. Most are comfortable with the idea of approving an electronic proof, and all appreciate the turnaround times they enable.
"We like to concentrate on the value-adds we can offer our customers," Blakistone suggests. "There's a real valu
