In this episode we are continuing the workflow tour. (See part 1 here.) No tour is ever as comprehensive as we might want. There are so many important elements that are colored by the nature of the work, the required turnaround time, and the customers served. That means that you should consider this a high fly over guide, but it will get you started on an important process. This is the time to do it because moving toward maximum efficiency now will set you up to access the best margins for the work you sell.

This time we have arrived at where the rubber meets the road – the production process. We started with some of the prepress elements in the last episode. By now you should know what tools are in use to estimate and quote, gather job information, preflight and color manage the work. You should also have a healthy respect for how jobs are moving through production. Now let’s tour a few additional hot spots.

Preflight and color management are essential elements, but they are not they full story of getting ready for print. They touch specific processes of getting a file ready for print, but you also need to have all of the job information pulled together for the production team. There are also decisions about how to get the job on the press. The starting questions to ask as you continue the tour of your workflow processes are: