Top 3 reasons to use a prepress software for large-format printing
June 11, 2024
Prepress is an essential part of the printing process, and a crucial step that guarantees the quality and accuracy of the final product. It is the final checkpoint between the order received from the customer and the actual production process. Many prepress software have appeared on the market, and their primary function is to ensure that digital files are correctly formatted for printing.
In this article, we explain why prepress software a must-have tool for any print business aiming to produce high-quality results. We will also go through all the financial benefits of using prepress software in your workflow.
What is a prepress software?
Prepress software encompasses various programs and tools used in the printing industry to prepare digital files for printing and cutting. They are popular among graphic designers, publishers, prepress and print operators for producing high-quality printed materials. More specifically, prepress software assists with diverse tasks, including designing and formatting documents, editing images, managing fonts, making sure that the image resolution is high enough for printing, converting files to the correct format, and preparing digital files for printing by setting up print bleed or margins.
There are many different types of prepress software available, each with its own set of features and capabilities.
For example, Caldera PrimeCenter is a prepress software designed to simplify the preparation of print and cut files. Located upstream of the workflow, PrimeCenter checks, corrects, sorts, groups and prepares files for production. It aims to reduce manual errors, cut down media waste and increase your printshop’s productivity.
Top 3 advantages of using prepress software
1. Prepress software helps you reduce your costs
PrimeCenter saves me, depending on the workload, from 20 minutes to 2-3 hours per day, by not having to set things up manually. We created the recipe we needed for producing our yard signs— now we dump everything in PrimeCenter, and we can print and cut on the fly, it’s fantastic!
Mike Kasold, MK Signs – PrimeCenter user
Prepress software helps businesses reduce costs by streamlining the printing process, improving the quality of printed materials, and minimizing waste. By correcting issues in your files, prepress software allows businesses to avoid costly reprints and delays. Automation and template creation can save time and increase efficiency, ultimately leading to cost savings as well.
We designed PrimeCenter to help print businesses of all size to achieve significant savings. With its automatic nesting engine, PrimeCenter helps to cut down media waste by up to 20%, resulting in significant waste (and cost) reduction for your company.
How does nesting work?
The software detects the shapes and automatically arranges them in the most optimized layouts. This allows you to make the most of your media and increase your margins. Click here to learn more about Nesting in PrimeCenter.
PrimeCenter also makes it possible to prepare print and cut jobs three times faster by using custom recipes (per customer, type of media, or media format). Using these recipes helps to deliver consistent output and to save a significant amount of time— time that you can use to generate more revenue.
With such financial benefits on the line, making the investment is a no-brainer!
2. Prepress software helps you streamline your production
We are a small, fast-growing e-commerce company mainly selling to private individuals. We have a large flow of files to print every day, and we use PrimeCenter to organize the files ordered via our webshop. It has simplified our work considerably. We drag the files into the recipes and they’re basically ready-to-print. It took a much longer time when we did our layouts in our RIP software, so PrimeCenter has been a real time saver for us.
Namly Design, PrimeCenter user
You might be tempted to think that a prepress software is yet another piece of technology that will complicate your workflow. But setup properly, prepress software streamline the entire process by automating the small, repetitive tasks involved in making a document ready to print and cut. That includes preflighting, adding cut contours, adding print bleed, nesting, adding cut marks and annotations… Automating these time-consuming, low-value tasks is key to reduce manual errors, avoid costly reprints and meet tight deadlines.
Additionally, we designed Caldera PrimeCenter to integrate seamlessly in any production environment. It is compatible with any RIP software, and any cutter controller supporting the PDF format. Finally, it also integrates with third-party tools like ERP/MIS solutions or webshops— anything to boost your productivity.
Want to go further? Click here to learn more about automation in PrimeCenter.
3. Prepress software helps you improve the quality of your printed products
We use PrimeCenter to expedite the production process between the design department and the printing department. Daily tasks for designers are minimized as they don’t have to carve out time for print file setups and can focus on design setup and client communication.
Throttle Syndicate, PrimeCenter user
In the end, everything comes down to the products you’re delivering to your customers. And used properly, prepress software enhances the quality of your printed products by ensuring correct preparation for printing. By catching issues before the actual printing process, prepress software allows businesses to avoid costly reprints and delays.
PrimeCenter is no exception, with automatic preflight to help correct common issues such as missing cutting instructions, transparency, resolution, sizes, dimension or color problems. And using PrimeCenter’s custom recipes ensures you deliver consistent results for any given application.
Take your prepress to the next level
It is also worth noting that prepress software doesn’t replace a RIP software, but its advanced preflighting is far more effective in preventing issues at the production stage. It does not replace a designer’s job or a prepress operator’s job either— it frees them up from repetitive, low-value, time consuming tasks. Who wants to spend hours manually arranging files on an Illustrator artboard when a software can do it automatically for you in one click? Instead, prepress operators can focus on more added-value tasks such as designing and communication with customers for proofing and validation.
Prepress software like PrimeCenter are game-changers to prepare files for production. Anticipating printing, cutting and finishing steps helps to streamline the entire workflow while saving time, reducing costs and increasing productivity.
Want to give PrimeCenter a try? We will be more than happy to setup a product demo tailored to your needs!
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