Also known as desktop operators and sometimes electronic prepress operators, these technicians work in large and small businesses or firms to help format and proof text and images. They also help submit texts and pictures by designers and clients into finished pages you can print. But because it can be challenging to understand the term and what a prepress professional does, one of the primary activities that involve what a prepress technician does is if you consider packaging. With packaging, you will explore everything that requires printing and designing texts and images.
At the same time, packaging also involves artwork, software management, and even flexographic plating and mounting. More importantly, if you want to know more about the work of a prepress technician, you can read to find your packaging here before you explore the kind of work you can handle as a prepress professional. Next, let’s find out everything these professionals do.
Types of Work a Prepress Technician Does
The main job of a prepress professional does contain three stages. It has the prepress process, the pressing, and then binding. And the binding process also involves the finishing, which is mostly packaging. Plus, the technician’s kind of work depends on the size of the business they work with. For example, those working at small firms only deal with printing, correcting texts and images, and sometimes do little design work. But for those working at large companies, their work involves formatting printing materials, fixing design layouts, and formatting and correcting images and texts. In addition, other activities you will do as a prepress technician include the following.
Operating Photographic Development and Print Equipment
If a company uses photographic and print production tools, part of the experts who operate and ensure these tools work as expected are prepress technicians. And when attending to these tools, the prepress professional’s work could include correcting the printed images after video productions or even pictures for creating billboards and other advertorial dealings.
Inspecting Printed Materials and Verifying Image Qualities
Part of your work as a prepress technician also involves understanding and distinguishing between low and high-quality images. Therefore, you will inspect all company images taken for various purposes and ensure the final images are of high quality and fit the goals the brand wants to fulfill.
For example, suppose your company deals with clothes and wants to advertise to a wide range of customers. You will help the camera operators take the best images and verify their quality before posting them on social platforms or the brand website. Or, if the company creates wedding photoshoots, you also confirm the quality of the pictures taken for two reasons. One, it could be ensuring the images are of high quality for marketing purposes, and two, it could be when you want to send the final edits to the customers. Whichever the reason, the idea is that you should always ensure every image sent to customers or used for marketing depicts the quality of services the company offers- and that should be quality and satisfying results all the time.
Entering Commands and Instructions, and Specifications Into Equipment
Your work as a prepress technician for large companies will also include entering commands and specifications or instructions for different tools. Plus, the instructions you put in will also target particular goals and objectives of the company. For instance, it could be putting instructions on computers to keep remote workers busy and assigning tasks. Such remote workers should include designers and freelancers dealing with text tasks and others.
And as a prepress professional, you will enter instructions to help designers and others follow such commands and deliver work that can be sent to clients directly with minimum to no edits. Or, you could be assigned tasks on work management software, where you name the orders based on the remote worker’s details.
Editing Documents
Although this is familiar to editing that involves written documents to correct spelling and sometimes grammar mistakes or the flow and engagement, working as a prepress technician could mean doing more than the typical editing of text documents. You could be editing images and designs.
And for photos, editing could mean looking at the proper spacing, the color, and the placement of various images on documents and anywhere else for print media. On the other hand, for designs, your work will involve looking at the appearance of different design projects, correcting their image placements, and the words that follow after them as product or service descriptions.