Electronic Page Assembly
Electronic Page Assembly covers a lot of space. This will undoubtedly be a poor attempt to illustrate the point. Electronic Page Assembly actually starts with accurate preflighting. Once all the elements are in play, the electronic file, usually Illustrator, Indesign or Quark, will need to be prepped. This is done by stripping unused colors from the color palette, deleting unused layers to reduce file size, converting unused spot colors to 4 color process, relinking hires color corrected images, adding bleed or extending backgrounds when necessary, rasterizing blends in Photoshop to reduce banding, adding marks, adjusting dies for proofing and plating, creating white plates for flexo jobs if needed, check all elements and images for printer specs, trap if required for the print workflow and trouble shoot everything else.
Each job is unique and requires a totaly different set of steps to get from point A to point B, B being the final pdf for plating or printing. The variables are as vast as space.
