What happens at a press check? What should I be looking for?
A press check is your final chance to see your print job, as the first pages come off the press, and to check that everything is right. A press check can take few minutes, or a few hours, depending upon the complexity of your project.
If you do have to make a change at press time, it can be very expensive! New plates may be required, and the press may have to be stopped—and every change and delay costs money. So be sure that you’ve done your proofreading and other quality assurance checks before the job goes to press. This is not the time to be finding typos or changing your mind about a photo. Of course, if you do find a major typo or an incorrect illustration, it is better to catch it here before thousands of copies are printed!
The best use of a press check is to get one last look at the printed pages before they are printed in quantity. Colour proofs are only simulations that represent the way the final printed project will look. They are produced on an ink-jet printer on special proofing paper, using different inks than printing presses use. So when you see the press sheets, with the actual printing inks on the printing stock, colours may be slightly different. The press check is your opportunity to see the "real thing".
