What I Do

Looking Fixedly by M. Drake

Well it's been a little over 3 months now since I started my new position at work...about the time the owner and art director felt it would take me to train, learn and be comfortable & confident in my position. I definitely feel like I've come a long way and really enjoy my job as a Prepress Color Specialist. I thought I would share a post explaining what I do and sharing some pieces I've recently finished prepressing and getting them published. Basically my job is to "prepress" original artwork that comes in. To "prepress" original artwork I start out by scanning it on a sophisticated Cruse large format scanner. Fortunately this scanner does a great job leaving the digital raw files with not so much "touching up" needed. I then compare these digital scan files with the original art. I sit in a neutral gray room with special lighting and have a special color calibrated computer monitor, so I can match the colors as close as possible. Some pieces of art are easier to prepress than others. Some will only take me 1-3 rounds of proofs, others can take me 15-20 rounds of proofs! With each proof round I go over the print of the digital file and compare it with the original piece of art with my art director. He'll give me instruction for example with the piece above that the blacks need to be more saturated, and some particular blue brush strokes have too much of a cyan or magenta hue that need to be removed, or I need to bump up the contrast in a particular area. It then is my job to figure out the easiest way to make those fixes to the digital file using Photoshop.

Lemon Branch by Krowitz

I work on many different styles of art, so it's fun to see the different pieces. We publish a lot of abstract but I've also worked on many botanical & floral, figurative, mixed media and animal & bird pieces as well. I have to say the impressionism and expressionism style pieces are more difficult to prepress. They can be challenging.
Silhouette in Red by Jones
After my art director approves my proof, I get my digital file ready to be published on our company's website and make several types of print files of it for our printing department. That way when orders come in via the website or phone, the print department just uses the print file I've made, prints the piece and frames it!
We Think We Know I by Jones
Some of the pieces I've worked on have gotten bought by our partner companies such as Z Gallerie, Crate & Barrel, Bed Bath & Beyond, Surya, Costco and many more, and then the limited edition prints are sold exclusively through there stores. It's fun to walk in some of those stores and recognize art pieces from our company and now some that I may have prepressed!
Basketball by Otterstad
I also get the chance to work with a number of local Austin artist that we do business with like this artist, Opie Otterstad. I've prepressed a similar basketball piece for him like the one above. Many of his original pieces are commissioned by professional teams and players and then he sells reproductions of them which he has printed by us. His style is really unique, he paints only with a palette knife, no brushes. It's a great experience to work with these local artists! I am very thankful for my job!