Helprint - Repro instructions

You can use this page to download Helprint’s repro-guide and ICC profiles to your computer. To ensure successful colour management and high quality final results, please contact our customer service, so that we can go through the technical details of the work together, before starting the repro-work.

Prepress

Reproduction for gravure printing - as with other printing methods today - takes place completely digitally. Image processing and creative work is done with computer software, and colour managed proofs are typically printed using inkjet printers. Colour separation and proofing in the repro is based on the printer's ICC profiles or standard gravure printing ICC profiles. For the repro house the colour management for gravure printing is not different from other printing methods.

The customer or the repro house supplies the approved print-ready material to the printer as digital file, usually in the PDF format. In Helprint the pages are ripped and placed on the cylinder according to the imposition scheme of the printed signature, after which the job is ready for engraving.

In gravure printing the image carrier is a copper cylinder. Image elements are engraved to the cylinder surface with a diamond stylus in electromechanical engraving process. The engraving machines used in publication rotogravure have several engraving heads which engrave the cylinder simultaneously. Prior to the engraving, the surface of the cylinder is first copper plated electrolytically and then polished for the engraving. After the engraving, the cylinder is chrome plated and ground in order to obtain the required hardness and optimal surface properties for the printing. After the printing, the chromium is removed and the cylinder can be prepared for the next job. Printing cylinders, therefore, rotated forever in the process, and only their surface is treated according to the requirements of the printing.

Downloadable files