Prepress input application of various innovative technologies

After China's accession to the WTO, various industries are facing a new market environment. The development of prepress technology as a pioneer in the printing industry is changing with each passing day. In the fierce competition, technological factors have become increasingly prominent. How to make better use of some mature technologies? The new process will be the key to gaining an advantage in the competition.

In the current prepress technology, the production process can be basically divided into three major steps: information input, layout and finished product output. There are many articles discussed in layout layout and finished product output, and there is no more to say here. The input of information as the first step of the prepress process mainly includes the input of words and images. Recently, some new technologies and processing methods have appeared on these two technologies.

In the prepress process, the role of information input is to input the various types of graphics provided by the customer into the computer to complete the digital processing, which is called when the backend layout is scheduled. The current manuscript type has been developed from the traditional paper media manuscript to paper. Media, electronic documents, films, and physical objects coexist, and the efficient use of different types of manuscripts can drastically reduce production costs and shorten production cycles.

Paper media original input

Traditional paper media manuscripts mainly consist of texts and pictures, and the pictures are input with high-precision, high-speed scanners, which can achieve considerable production efficiency. The processing of the manuscripts has traditionally been entered verbatim by the entry clerk, and the efficiency is low. Generally, an excellent text entry worker can record about 32,000 words in one working day, and the quality varies from person to person. In recent years, OCR (photovoltaic recognition) technology has been used to input text. The principle is that the original is entered as a picture through a scanner and stored in a computer into a certain image format. The computer software enters the input image file line by line from the dot profile. The information collation character information database is converted into the national character code, and finally the characters are input and stored. In the application of this technology, the clarity of the manuscript and the reasonableness of the scanning parameters are the key to ensure the correct recognition of the text. With regard to the current level of OCR technology, the current recognition rate for printed manuscripts and printed manuscripts can reach 95% or more, but it is not ideal for handwritten manuscripts, and manual entry is still required.

In a large number of manual input jobs, the Wubi type input method is commonly used in the printing industry. Operators often encounter a large number of common Chinese characters that cannot be input. This is because the currently used Wubi fonts are based on the last century. The GB2312 national standard published in the early 1980s, of which there were only 6763 Simplified Chinese characters, was caused by the limitations of computer hardware performance and Chinese character processing at the time. With the development of electronic technology and the deepening of informatization, the country has gradually expanded and established new standards for the encoding of Chinese characters GBK and GB18030-2000, of which the GBK standard includes 21,009 Chinese characters, and GB18030-2000 includes 27,533 Chinese characters. The number of Chinese characters in the GB2312 standard has been increased by several times, basically satisfying the demand for publishing Chinese characters in general publications, and no longer requires extra adoing or spelling. At present, the PC machine in the prepress system generally adopts the Windows 9X/ME/2000 operating platform. The platform itself has a custom input method and supports GBK encoding. We can use the GBK code table published by the country to use the location code to complete the Chinese characters. Input, and then according to their own habits of Chinese characters, through the WordPad or Notepad can be made out of the input code table source file, use the input method generator main program lmegen.exe and a certain rule to generate a new input method, can be directly entered All the Chinese characters included in the code list are not much different from ordinary input methods. By using the Chinese characters that cannot be input by the ordinary five-stroke input method, it is not necessary to check the GBK internal code dictionary or Microsoft Pinyin input and directly input according to the set input method, which can greatly increase the production efficiency. When using the Chinese character, as long as this character can be normally displayed, that is, there is a display font of the character in the system, and the normal output of the character can be completed by using the character download function.

Electronic document input

The most common types of electronic documents include electronic documents such as Word, Excel, WPS, and other office automation systems, and professional publishing system electronic documents such as PageMaker, FreeHand, CorelDRAW, and Founder series publishing software. The contents include text and images. According to the final output requirements, If you need to re-create, you can use the export (output) function of the above software to convert the text into a compatible text format (.txt file) for use by the corresponding typesetting software, eliminating the need for text entry and text proofreading. . When using images, some software itself can edit images and output them into EPS or TIFF file formats, such as FreeHand, CorelDRAW, etc. Some software such as Word, WPS, etc. can use data to automatically draw some graphics, output of such graphics. The software can be used to edit and adjust the image. When the image is not deformed or distorted, it can be enlarged as much as possible and then copied to the operating system cutting board. Special image editing software, such as Photoshop, can be created to create the appropriate file type. Paste, edit, adjust and save it for backend call. For a file that cannot be edited by the image editor itself, it can be printed into a file and output in one-bit tiff file format via RIP. In short, we must choose the output method according to the specific needs. These file formats support high-resolution output of text and graphics.

For documents that can be output directly, after clearing the requirements for software settings in the original document production process, such as fonts, attributes, color management, etc., printouts can be printed out. Note that at this time we must use Postscript print driver and back-end output PPD (print description file), using Postscript has the following characteristics: 1 has a strong graphics processing capabilities, describe a very complex layout without distortion; 2 using the curve Descriptive text, font output quality is better; 3 page output has nothing to do with the output device, output accuracy, follow-up output compatibility. Using the corresponding PPD can avoid the output difference caused by incompatibility between the typesetting software and the output description.

For the use of downloading picture files from the Internet, most of the files have an accuracy of 72 dpi and are effective when used on a computer. If they are used for output printing, the accuracy is too low. If it must be used, one method is to increase the accuracy by reducing the size of the picture to 1.5 to 2 times the number of printing screens while keeping the pixels of the picture unchanged. Another method is to output the image if the image is output by the computer through a program. , you can improve the display accuracy by increasing the number of image pixels to improve the image output accuracy and quality.

In the use of electronic documents for information sharing, in order to ensure quality and system safety, the following issues need to be noted: 1 to ensure that the data file is complete and accurate, so as to avoid deviations in the output results and the needs of customers; 2 to ensure the correctness of the file format The consequence of the wrong file format is that garbled files may cause difficulties for backend calls; files that cannot be opened cannot be opened or edited. 3 Preventing computer viruses from invading. The biggest hidden danger of sharing computer information resources is the spread of viruses.

The input of the film manuscript

The processing of film manuscripts brought by customers, and the traditional way of manually affixing films to copying and copying plates, is increasingly unable to meet the needs of the process. The requirements for digital preprocessing of the films (CopyDot) are becoming more and more urgent. The technology provides yet another solution for the processing of unconventional manuscripts. Digital input can be made for any type of manuscript provided by the customer, clearing the input barrier for the prepress technology to be fully digital. According to the working principle of dot-sweep scanners, special attention should be paid to the setting of scanning resolution in the process of use. First, pay attention to the ratio of output lines of the rear-end output device—laser photo-setter or plate-setter, in order to avoid the output. Moire and so on, secondly, often check the balance of the scanner X-Y scan accuracy, so as not to appear uneven when scanning large format film around the middle and the middle.

Physical input

Traditionally, the use of the camera to take photos of the actual object is followed by rinsing into photographs, scanning, and editing. Several steps are required in the middle, and each link inevitably causes interference and deviation to the physical effects, and the production time is prolonged. The use of digital cameras solves these problems. Especially in recent years, the CCD technology of digital cameras has been improving day by day. Images taken with digital cameras can be used not only in less demanding newspapers, but also through careful editing and adjustment of images. In some ordinary pictures, the effect is also very good. After shooting the digital camera, use the USB port on the computer as much as possible to transfer and use the TIFF file format, which is conducive to uploading speed and high-precision output of pictures.

In prepress technology, the cycle of new equipment and new technology is getting faster and faster. How to fully utilize the advanced equipment and process technology production capacity requires that technicians and producers continue to explore and learn.

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