This is because general estimates put the proportion of submitted files that need errors fixing before printing at around 60%, which represents a significant time investment. If you could automate the fixing of the processes to correct those errors, then suddenly you could save a lot of time and, importantly, money.

But automating here is not easy. Changing designs without client approval is a risky business; giving complex processes over to computers can be dangerous; and some say that spending vast sums of cash to fix small problems is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The reason for the high percentage of files submitted with errors is partly absentmindedness, but mostly down to a lack of knowledge on the part of the people creating the artwork, according to Lance O’Connell, Heidelberg UK business executive for Prinect and CTP.

"When I was a student in design college, we were taught about print techniques and we knew about separations and screening – the fundamentals of ink on paper," he says. "Now, it’s all computers. Current students do not know about the print process. We have done away with the traditional training, and that is creating the problems."

Hence, when a product arrives at the printers, the errors can be numerous, varied and, occasionally,  very complicated. Bleeds, fonts, and image resolutions are the most common problems, but beyond these are so many potential issues that it would take the rest of this feature to list them. If a workflow could automatically fix all these errors reliably, then a great deal of time could be taken out of the print process.

Pipe dreams
However, Pixart Printing owner Matteo Rigamonti believes that this kind of workflow is just a pipe dream.

"The gloomy truth is that a human being will always be needed just for the final check, as the range of problems is so wide and unexpected that an algorithm can’t be created," he explains.

Richard Gore, product specialist at Fujifilm’s European Software Business Unit, counters that modern workflows can fix many of the common problems, but admits that there are some hiccups they cannot address. He also concedes that many printers would not want some of the error-fixing taken out of their hands.

"With applications like Pitstop, you can do many fixes and automate many of the common problems, but it will never be able to fix everything – or, at least, not necessarily to an acceptable level of quality for the printer and/or client . For example, you can check for low-res images and resample to a higher resolution, but we all know that depending on how low-res the source image is, and what the image is like (logo, linear, picture etc), the results may or may not be good enough."

This decision over quality can be influenced by the type of business the printer is operating. In the commercial litho world, the pre-press stage of the process is extensive, and involves a high degree of interaction between client and printer to get the end result right, with the client having final approval. In the digital world, however, there is more willingness to hand control to the software to get a quicker result. And the software appears to be up to the job.

"We have found that in the digital print environment, it tends to be quite an anonymous process, especially with W2P," reveals Kodak pre-sales consultant David McGuiness. "As a consumer, you know that when you upload a photograph, it is down to you to decide what you want. In return, you get it for a set price and that file is rushed through the system via automation, so you get the product very quickly. The commitment for the results is on the customer, not the printer. There is very little – if any – interaction between the two. It needs to be that way to get the margin on the job, as that is why the work can be delivered for the cheap price."

Indeed, spending time fixing problems manually would quickly see the margin in low-cost, quick turnaround digital print disappear – the automated fixes may not work perfectly every time, but they work well enough, most of the time, to not cause a problem. Chris Burns, systems solutions specialist at Agfa, admits that this level of automation could, technically, be transferred into the litho commercial arena, but that most printers would not want to take the risk.

"As soon as you come to editing the customer’s file, you have to ask yourself whether it is worth the risk of tampering with it," he explains. "Even simple things such as resampling a file to improve the resolution (there are routines out there to do that, as well as for colour-correcting) are risks. With the colour-correcting, what if there is a specific colour in that file requested by the customer and your changes make that colour are different one? You are liable for that change."

Another danger is that automatic fixes could correct elements that are design features rather than errors. Precision Colour Printing technical director Warren Irving explains that he could not hand over total control to a workflow, as he regularly sees design features that could be incorrectly labelled ‘wrong’ by an automated workflow. For example, he cites the case of an R&A job where the folio numbers were very large and it looked as though the page had been sent at the wrong size; in actual fact, these large folio numbers were part of the design. A pre-press operator could look at the context and realise it was a design choice (though Irving obviously double-checked with the client, too).

Hickling & Squires studio manager Matt Tatler agrees that trusting a workflow poses too large a risk. He says that while for very basic errors (like colour conversions) he will trust the automation, the human element of the workflow is – by and large – essential.

"Basically, you don’t want to give the technology so much rope that it can hang itself. You have to be 100% sure it can do the job properly. At present, it cannot do that for many of the processes," he explains.

Of course, if the client is double-checking everything that occurs and making the final approval of the artwork, then not being 100% correct all the time should not matter – the mistake will be caught. However, some printers and manufacturers argue that if you are going to go into every file and check the automation has done its job, you may as well save yourself cash and make the changes yourself.

Complex procedures
This is certainly the view of many of the manufacturers, who explain that basic automation is about as far as most printers want to take it. However, there are instances of more complex procedures that have been automated. One is where the workflow will seek out the high-res image from a database if the PDF contains the low-res version by mistake, a function both EFI and Kodak promote with Fiery and Prinergy respectively.

Heidelberg’s O’Connell says this function is available as a Heidelberg product, but Heidelberg UK doesn’t actively promote it, as it does not see how many printers would benefit – most UK printers will not be holding all their clients’ artwork files on a server, as that is a service only the big corporates are looking for. Hickling & Squires’ Tatler, one of Heidelberg’s customers, supports this, explaining that he keeps the option to autoseek the high-res files switched off, as the risk of the wrong image being selected is too high.
For O’Connell, the push towards ever-more automation in the workflow like this is ultimately pointless, as the extra cost of sorting each single problem automatically is "using a hammer to crack a nut". He argues that the real investment should be going into better-educating clients to submit proper files. Heidelberg is set to launch training programmes in the new year, which will include seminars for designers and other creatives on how to create print ready files, which will include some basic print process training.

"The workflow is doing a lot, but if you want it to do more, it will be hard to get a return on your investment. So education is the route we have to take now," he argues.

Others are not so sure that the future does not hold more automation, or at least that it should not be dismissed. EFI Graphic Arts Solutions general manager Stefan Spiegel says that you cannot rule out a future breakthrough that may enable workflow to be more automated.

"Look at where Apple has taken technology with Siri and voice recognition: no-one thought that would be possible, and yet here we are with it as a reality. I think that, similarly, there is likely to be more we can do with workflow in the future that currently seems unlikely or impossible," he explains.

Whether automation in the workflow increases will ultimately be down to customer demand. At present, it seems that the printers are happy to fix the problems as and when they occur and to cover themselves with web approval processes for their customers. If the margins are eroded even further in the litho market, then it may be that this willingness to spend time on pre-press manually may wane, but for now, the litho pre-press room is still a very human hive of activity.