Chapters 1, 2 & 3

In this new post, I will discuss facts of interest in chapters 1, 2 and 3 in Claudia McCue's "Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications". To begin I shall talk about the Finishing Processes. The Finishing Processes when it comes to print jobs vary due to the specifics of each individual job.It is the process that occurs after the job is printed. Essentially, the final touch ups before distribution. An example of a Finishing Process is Die Cutting. Die Cutting is often used for a print job that requires special shaping to edges or folding. This type of cut often involves scoring or "the act of pressing an indentation into the stock to facilitate folding the final piece." ( McCue, 72).
Other aspects included in print jobs are aspects such as the Folding Dummy which is a blank sheet of paper folded in the shape of the print job. This dummy is used like a rough draft of the finished print to check that folding and imposition are correct.
 Other well known terms that follow the life cycle of a print job include hearing about your image being RIPed. A RIP or Raster Image Processor is a special computer that combines proprietary technology to translate PostScript/PDF input into very high resolution images. In this computer, an Imagesetter is used as the means of translating the RIPed image into the high-res bitmap. It takes the film and images it by exposing the film with laser/light-emitting diodes (two digital devices that produce energy).
In terms of how the image is measured, it is usually done with picas and points. The difference between the two is that picas are the smaller unit of the two as one pica is equal to twelve points.

Moving through to chapter two, it discusses the different ways ink can be placed on print and the way colors are distributed to create the images. When thinking on what colors prints can be, one must know that a basic print is almost always a two color job, meaning that to print the image, two colors are needed to print it. With that said, let's begin the breakdown of chapter two. First, when broken down to the tiniest form, resolutions occur in three different ways: Dots per Inch (DPI) which is typically used for printers and imagesetters, Lines per Inch (LPI) which is used for measurement along the rows of dots and Pixels per Inch (PPI) which is used to describe image resolution. In terms of color prints, most images are printed are generally made with the four colors cyan, magenta, yellow and black or, CMYK.  When the print colors separate from CMYK, they use Spot colors. Spot colors are colors that have special additions to their hues such as neon green or navy blue. With Spot color rendering, images with color falling out of CMYK can still be printed onto an image medium.

Some last additions I'd like to share that I've learned about is the importance of registration and VDP. With Registration, printed inks are applied to paper in alignment. This helps the overall neatness of the image as the inks are applied in rapid succession rather than at the same time. Last but not least VDP or Variable Data Publishing is important in that it personalizes the printed products to target specific people rather than generic mailing. VDP is beneficial in that it sparks active and positive responses from the customers the printed material is being distributed to.