"camera-ready original"

[Lisa Roth]

"Camera-Ready." Ahh, that's an oldie but goodie from the days of when 
"cut" and "paste" really meant CUTTING (with a razor knife) and PASTING 
(with hot wax).

In that context, "camera-ready" means that it is able to be reproduced 
as-is, without requiring any formatting or other production adjustments.

In today's age, that would generally refer to something they can 
immediately give to the copyroom staff to make 200 bound copies of with 
no questions asked. What does that *really* mean?

It means the copy you supply--either hard or soft copy--will already 
account for binding margins, if any, you will already have accounted for 
proper pagination by inserting blank pages in order to force something 
to begin on a face page, etc.

The final frontier is that you will have saved the artwork at a setting 
suitable for whatever repro device the client plans to use. This is 
primarily determined in terms of DPI of images vs. the DPI of the repro 
device. A photocopier and an offset press are entirely different 
ballgames! Even within the realm of using an offset press, the paper 
type also factors in. You can print the same image on the same press and 
the same ink but by two different paper types find yourself with two 
VERY different results. (Some paper types have higher "dot gain" than 
others.)

Basically you need a fair amount of information about what the client 
intend to DO with the document physically after you create it. Do they 
intend to post it in PDF on the Web *and* print it on an offset press? 
If so, you'd need to create two files. The DPI for web PDFs is on whole 
heck of a lot lower than for offset presses! That's just one example of 
the questions that need to be asked.

I hope that's helpful. I bet I sound really "old-school" now. (You'd be 
surprised, but I'm not!)  : )




Susan Hogarth wrote:
> I am writing a proposal and one of the requirements in the statement
> of work is to provide: "a camera-ready original and electronic copy on
> computer disk".
> 
> I'm afraid I am almost completely a product of the digital age. I see
> this phrase ("camera ready") often and have only a very vague idea of
> what it means. Is it just a really clean copy on good paper? Should I
> describe the paper, the dpi, etc?
>