Standard Prepress Duties vs a Packaging Prepress person

[t-pat]

didn't take long for this to go 100% OT.

[Ear]

Look, a squirrel...

[gnubler]

 

[Sabrina The Turd Polisher]

Coke and __________? (fill in the blank)

a'straw 

[DigiCorn]

Coke and __________? (fill in the blank)

a'straw 

I hate people who take drugs. Customs and police for example.

[NefariousDrO]

A few months ago I interviewed with a packaging company in Pittsburgh, and their biggest concern was my knowledge of trapping techniques. They actually sent me a Illustrator file and had me manually trap it. The thing was really complex, in terms of number of inks, layering of those inks, and the highly detailed specifications they had for the trapping. I'd always been in offset printing, and considered myself pretty decent at it until that test. From that experience I suspect that is the real big issue for prepress people making the transition to packaging. Now that I'm working for a Label-producer I'm learning how to deal with opaque white layers, allowing some things to trap and other to not trap, etc. There definitely are differences, but if you've worked for a few years in offset it's nothing that can't be learned, although I'm finding that it takes several months to really get a good feel for the differences.

[andyfest]

On some carton jobs we use the trapping module in Nexus, but for most jobs manual trapping is necessary to get everything trapping perfectly. It's good to hear we aren't the only ones in the packaging industry still doing some trapping the old-fashioned way.

[t-pat]

we just get all crazy in the coconut with custom densities in the color database in Prinergy to get things to trap. Lots of our packaging work requires 2 hits of the same pms, big flood coats and whatnot. Can be interesting.

[David]

I remember messing with the color densities with Scitex years ago to fudge the trapping. ton's o' fun

With Esko it's way easier to custom trap stuff, rich blacks with pull backs, opaque whites, metallic's, etc. We also have to be careful with the ink lay down order as well. Sometimes the metallic's go down first, sometimes second.

Our pressroom is special...         

[t-pat]

I remember messing with the color densities with Scitex years ago to fudge the trapping. ton's o' fun

With Esko it's way easier to custom trap stuff, rich blacks with pull backs, opaque whites, metallic's, etc. We also have to be careful with the ink lay down order as well. Sometimes the metallic's go down first, sometimes second.

Our pressroom is special...         

yeah, doesn't matter what order it *should* go down here, it's whatever is easier for the pressman. We rerun stuff "fixed" to get around that issue. You'd think putting down the black last would be SOP but noooo, and gee, black that overprints metallics only works if you put it down last.

[David]

...and gee, black that overprints metallics only works if you put it down last.

really, I wonder if my press room knows this.     

[NefariousDrO]

I'm glad to see the prepress vs pressmen climate remains as it's always been. I've always felt as if the Pressmen are so used to being catered to they think we can fix anything they don't want to deal with.

[t-pat]

I'm glad to see the prepress vs pressmen climate remains as it's always been. I've always felt as if the Pressmen are so used to being catered to they think we can fix anything they don't want to deal with.

can't unprint it.

can't fix stupid.

I mean, FFS it's called OVERprint for a reason, and it's not called UNDERprint for the same reason.

[beermonster]

back in my packaging days......(long boring speech here) - trapping is mental - sure there's auto traps but carton board can go wild so manual traps were better by far. visualizing, accurate proofing, mock-ups, cutters, traps, embosses, varnishes, double hits, screen underpins - all the good stuff really goes on. especially after say a lil ol million run you find an error..........

i'd say ANY decent prepresser can do packaging  - there's the tricky stuff to pick up but fukkit it's all just another colour or layer - it's just learnin how to handle it. the same shit comes in from desighners with the same errors and shit to fix.

i'd say just about anyone on here would pick it up just fine - ceptin me - i got out and into "other" print stuff

[rickself]

Wow, I can't believe I missed this thread.
I have 25 years in prepress and just began a job with a packaging/carton company in April. Aside from getting to know the multitude of dies that we have, it's still prepress. All of our die layouts come from another packaging house and the dies are made from one of two die houses out of state. We just put in a Komori L640 and I've been able to set up my (as in ME, the ONLY one) prepress department the way I want it, errr, within budget anyways.

But back to the OP, packaging isn't a lot different than traditional prepress, other than more stable. Packaging will always be around. Coffeetable books are hard to come by anymore, hence the closure of many big print shops. We produce close to 1 million cartons a month and when nearby traditional printers might be scheduled out a week, we're scheduled out 3 or 4 weeks. Job security at age 55 is nice to have.