ROCHESTER, N.Y., Aug. 22 -- Advances in software and technology-combined with the need to produce high quality jobs, meet tight turnaround times and minimize errors-make it more important than ever for creative professionals to understand what printers need for accurate output. A series of eight PIA/GATF seminars this summer discussed the importance of communicating the demands of printing early in the design phase. Eastman Kodak Company served as a primary sponsor of the seminar series. Titled "Mission: Possible-A Mutual Strategy for Creatives and Printers," the seminars addressed issues that may arise between creative and prepress teams. The seminars covered everything from design to digital image files to color appreciation. The content of the seminars are available in book form at www.gain.net. "Every day, printers face delays in their production processes due to provided files that cannot be output exactly as delivered," said James Workman, Vice President, Training, PIA/GATF. "These delays result in cost overruns, additional proofing rounds-which drive up expense and timelines-and ultimately customers who are unsatisfied with the final printed piece. Strengthening collaboration between creatives and prepress professionals is an important undertaking in today's marketplace, and this seminar tour did just that." "Mission: Possible-A Mutual Strategy for Creatives and Printers," touched on the following topics: - Design Considerations for Print Differences among paper types; fonts and formatting; rich blacks; issues surrounding trapping and transparency; and imposition. - Digital Image Files Differences between various image color spaces and their impact on the printing process, including insight on CMYK, RGB, duotones/tritons/quadtones, linework and grayscale. The importance of image resolution, screening options, and differences among EPS, TIFF and JPEG files were also examined. - Press Ready PDF Files Creating "good" PDF files for print production involves considering several issues, including page size to accommodate bleeds, which version of PDF to use, image compression, font embedding, transparency, and tagging images for color management. - Color Appreciation Presenters discussed topics such as the real primary colors, as well as how the paper chosen for a job can affect color. - Preflighting Creative professionals must not rely solely on software programs to check for errors. The human eye must play a role in the process and know what to look for. A checklist for visually inspecting files was provided. - Proofing Understanding the purpose and limitations of the proofing process, plus tips on proper viewing conditions and the differences between various proofing technologies. - The Prepress Process Issues surrounding PANTONE and spot color, as well as fonts, embedding restrictions, JPEG compression, the use of RGB in a PDF file, PDF layers, editing images and objects, and resizing PDFs. "A multitude of subjects were discussed during these seminars that all could be applied toward making the production process more defined, repeatable and achievable," said Steve Fullerton, Director, Trade Relations, Kodak's Graphic Communications Group. "Kodak is proud to have been involved with such a tour for the benefit of creative professions, as well as for the efficiency of the creative process and printing as a whole." Kodak offers solutions and expertise to help creative, production and marketing professionals seamlessly develop materials that maximize communications effectiveness. To streamline processes throughout all aspects of creative production, Kodak's expansive solutions enable digital asset management, creative content collaboration, project management, PDF creation, workflow, virtual proofing and hard copy proofing. For more information on the PIA/GATF seminar series, please visit www.gain.net (search "Mission Possible"). The handbook detailing the issues addressed in the seminar, entitled "Mission: Possible-Secrets Revealed" is available for purchase online or by calling 866-855-4283.