Printers charge to accept open files?

[budafist]

As a printer, we accept both open files (granted we have the software) as well as pdfs. We just found out a rival printing company also accept both open files and pdfs but if a client supplies open files, they charge an extra $75! Pdfs supplied don't incur a charge.

I know there is more work involved when dealing with open files, but we just consider it part of the service.

Management is just debating whether or not we should also start charging clients that send in open files.

Thoughts?

[DesignVHL]

please don't.

[SpugNothuson]

We're the same as you Buda we do both Open files and PDF, no charge for either.

But we are becoming the minority.

There is another company near us that charges for Open files. This is because they've made most of their pre-press staff redundant. An office bod drops the PDF into the pre-set workflow and hey presto out the other end pops a plate ready for the press. If there is a problem with the job its the PDFs fault, therefore the customers fault, therefore you still pay or face a trip to the small claims court.

It's turning into a shitty world of print.

[Rizz]

I think it depends on how much time pre-press has to spend on the open files. Do you have clients that are constantly givng you open files without supplying everything you need? Are you losing a lot of money/time on these jobs?

Before I started working at the print shop back home, they refused PDFs cause they couldn't get them to work. They preferred the open files (mostly PageMaker files) so they could fix things without having to wait on the client. And there are some PDFs that wouldn't work at all, so it caused us to lose money and time doing workarounds.

It really boils down to how much you lose in time, but I think if I was looking for a printer to handle my work, I'd go with the one that didn't charge me an arm and a leg for not having a PDF of the work. (though I doubt I'd ever send anything in that wasn't).

I think you'll be getting more work than the other guys if you don't charge extra.

-Rizz, who's a bit of a rambler....

[hewligan]

I generally send pdfs to printers, but my experience is that the printers who charge fees for open files are - um - generally not the good ones. If I were looking around for a printer, and saw that you charged a fee for open files, I'd probably take that as a sign that you were on the crappy end of the business.

[PrintDriver]

Use the fact that you don't to your marketing advantage.
Of course occasionally you do have to charge for inordinate amounts of desktop time. If a client makes changes, especially after the second proof for changes already made, you know, that kind of thing....

[jimking]

One day in the future it will be routine for graphic designers to send their jobs to a printer's que at some plant somewhere in the world. The designer will impose and allow trap in a user friendly online workflow. Your job will stand in line with other jobs. If it bounces? Oh well, back in the line it goes. Printers have lost alot of positions and control in the trade such as scanner operators, strippers, platemakers, compositers, proofmakers etc. and with the invention of desktop, in time, designers are taking over those roles. It would please many printers to just print and leave what they perceive as a problem to some outside group. Even though my opinion is that printers need to offer other services other than ink on paper.

[PrintDriver]

That would sure weed out the designer wannabees... Or at least those that can't read instructions. :D

I don't think scanning is lost yet. At least not where I work.

[jimking]

That would sure weed out the designer wannabees... Or at least those that can't read instructions. :D

I don't think scanning is lost yet. At least not where I work.

We scan too but for the most part the client scans to save money. The volume of scanning that we once did compared to now is almost nonexistant. I think there will be many more niche printers out there that will offer additional services, but by and large the designer will take on more responsibility in traditional offset printing. The designer will become the printer's prepress tech in time.

[jimking]

That would sure weed out the designer wannabees... Or at least those that can't read instructions. :D

I don't think scanning is lost yet. At least not where I work.

And you are right PrintDriver it will run the wannabees out very quickly! :D

[budafist]

Thanks for everyone's input. We don't get open files very often but when we do, about 80% of the time there are links or fonts missing.

I reckon we spend at extra 4-5 hours a week of non billable time on open files.

[jimking]

Often times their files maybe fine on their machine but when opened on another, %$^% happens. :eek:

[budafist]

Exactly. I guess in which case we should charge per basis for open files rather than a flat fee.

[Silence04]

when you say open files, do you mean outlined AI/EPS files or stray up layered illustrator files with text layers and all?

[budafist]

Normally without outlined text. Man, if open files were given to me with outlined text, that would be half the problem solved! The other problem is linked images.

[Rizz]

Normally without outlined text. Man, if open files were given to me with outlined text, that would be half the problem solved! The other problem is linked images.

I hear that! Most of the time clients have no idea what you mean by outlined text. What gets me is so called "professional designers" send in files with RGB images. Oi.

But we never charged them more than the original quote...

-Rizz

[DesignVHL]

Thanks for everyone's input. We don't get open files very often but when we do, about 80% of the time there are links or fonts missing.

I reckon we spend at extra 4-5 hours a week of non billable time on open files.


To me thats a designer or studio that just doesn't have a good biz practice work flow.....preflight and proofing should be a large part of making sure all files are properly prepared and in place. I think its due to stupidity, laziness, and/or a lack of being thorough! Charge to fix...charge for time needed to make it right or whatever, but I don't think good designers who supply perfect files for print should be penalized with increased fees. Stupid designers (apparently 80% - that surprises me) should only be penalized!

[D-Frag]

If a designer sends me a file with out the text outlined (ai) or a photoshop file without rasterizing the type, it goes back to them. I have had to deal with crap like that, and sorry, if you are a designer and don't know how to set up a file for prepress and ive clearly stated exactly what i need, then im not doing work for you. Simple as that. Stupid is, as stupid does.

I thought this was more of a question on if prepress was charging for non-flattened art. I think its also the printers responsibility to clearly state how they accept files, if you can't provide it in that EXACT way, then by all means charge away. Its normal for businesses to charge people for the pre-press production charges when the designer has their head up there you know what.

[budafist]

Just remember, not every designer has had an education (formal or otherwise) - some of these people are receptionists or nephews of the boss or other that are trying their best.

Then you get designers that hand files off to their clients and don't want to know anything more about the job. They are uncontactable or difficult to work with or take forever to send the files through. Some designers just tell the client that the printer should know how to "make it work"...Grrr...

Found out today that with some of our clients that hand in open files for regular jobs that are a PITA do get charged some handling/fixing fee. Not much but it helps. I guess that is better than charging a non negotiable fee for all open files (workable or not).

[SpugNothuson]

We rarely charge more than the original quote and we do not stipulate how the artwork should come to us.

If the job does turn out to be a major problem we will call the client to let them know that there will be an extra charge.

If it only takes us an hour, 2 at a push to fix it we wont charge more, but the clients company is flagged as not supplying print ready artwork and their next print job with us will have a charge built into it to compensate.

[tZ]

budafist wrote:
I reckon we spend at extra 4-5 hours a week of non billable time on open files

That is surprising. You should charge- most places charge. It is time after all and time isn't free.

Things like missing images or cmyk conversion is things that every designer should know and if they don't it shouldn't be the responsibility of the printer to do it for them without a fee. This is a business after all. If your sending rgb files or open formats with missed links you don't know what your doing and should be charged for the time it takes to make it right. The same hold true with missing fonts and all the other basic things that come along with designing for production/print.

[frailer]

This thread is pretty relevant. Things are evolving quickly. Our in-house "designers" [parentheses deliberate], are still in Quark 6.52. About 70% of our work. They have CS2. May be getting CS3 soon. Don't want to work in InDes. I still don't know whether they are going to ask for Quark 7.x.
Way I see it, things seem to be heading towards pre-checked/pre-digested PDFs. [I hate the corny expression pre-flight...very few of the PDFs I see fly! Wish they would]. If our DGs start using InDes, 30% of our prepress work will go; they're forever "styled" fonts. Won't conform to any requests on this. It gets drty/nasty if it's pushed. If they could be set up to use InDes and export Press Quality PDFs, we'd take a giant leap forward.
Then again, we're forever opening up their PhShop images and correcting them; mainly cos they're in-house, and that's what we do. I improved the look of a whole colour booklet recently, in a hurry cos I had to, just by doing Auto Adjustments in PhSh. Minimal time input by me, but they can't even do that.
On the other hand, when we get GOOD PDFs from outside, they're a breeze. This is a glimpse of the future IMHO. Prepress is evolving, as has been pointed out, but a lot of it's de-skilling.
Rant over.

[budafist]

I guess the de-skilling part is good right? It's becoming more automated to make our jobs (prepress) easier and give more control to the designers themselves. It also means that designers will need to step up and learn out to make press ready pdfs because they will need to be press ready because one day, there will be no one on the other end to fix the files.

Frailer, that reminds me, I'm so glad that we hardly ever get Quark open files. I might get 1 a month if that. Perhaps it's because Quark users are from the old school and are better at setting stuff up from start to finish? I mean in general...Quark is expensive and you get trained in that kinda thing if you're a business running Quark. However, if you're running CorelDraw or Publisher, there's a tendancy to get non press ready files because the people using those programs haven't been through courses and don't know the methods of setting things up for print.

Am I generalising or am I generalising?

I'm not a software snob. Ok, maybe just a little.

[steve2112]

i think if you are actually getting a crapload of files in and your presses are full 95% of the time and most of it is coming is a PDF then to say you only take pdfs unless there is a charge is fine. I wouldn't do it because the larger jobs i like having the ability to fix things natively is great but still i got Pitstop and that fixes most of any problems. If you are dealing with just crap like flyers, letterheads and business cards and the constantly get ganged up with other stuff then ya screw everyone else. I can make a solid pdf so i ont care.

steve

[budafist]

Our presses are busy 100% of the time. They are booked in advance. We don't gang up any jobs together. Quantities and colours and stock are always different. We generally have around 1 to 2 days backlog of work in the art department so it's not like we have the time to spend on problem files.

One day when we run out of work, I'd like do back ups and tidy up files and general housekeeping.

We did look into providing clients with a printer spec sheet, but every job is different so it was quite hard to generalise things that much. I will re-evaluate our spec sheet though. If designers can't follow those instructions then I do think they should be charged.

[carter the artist]

wow, that's stupid on the side of looking out for your customer. I prefer to deal with just open (I say native) files. Pdf's and such tend to have too many problems (especially when you need to do minute corrections.) that I have learned (both as a designer and pre press) it makes sense to use native and send a pdf along with it...

[Ned]

I don't get it Buda...

When I try to load an Open File, I get the Indesign Content Manager which states, "File is already Open", and it won't load for me. :(

Am I stupid, or just missing something...? :confused:

[urstwile]

:confused:

[budafist]

I don't get it Buda...

When I try to load an Open File, I get the Indesign Content Manager which states, "File is already Open", and it won't load for me. :(

Am I stupid, or just missing something...? :confused:

You forgot the smiley faces to show you're trying to be smart.

Get your coworker to close the file Ned so that you can work on it. ;)

[PrintDriver]

LOL on the 'open' file. :D
We call em Native files here.

You can tell Carter worked in Large format. Most who do prefer native files over pdf due to the inability of designers to apply the correct ICC profiles. Until online business start supplying those and designers learn how to use them, I have no worries that pre-press is here for my lifetime.

I use a postcard company that supplies their profiles. Always have terrific luck with them. BUT they do employ pre-press people to catch some gaffs. I've had a phone call or two. Another designer in my office never uses the profiles. And the jobs still come out nice. They take a day or two longer to get the proof but no cost difference. I guess what I'm trying to get at is, unless a company is willing to lose the business they would lose by not providing some level of pre-press, there will never truly be a day when it is entirely up to the designer to 'get it right or else...'

[Alan G]

I'll often send the preflighted CMYK PDF plus a link to the InDesign package in case the prepress folks have need of it. Usually they don't, but on odd occasions they do.

When I do send a package, all the images are Adobe RGB and everything else is CMYK, profiles included, because that's a much better design workflow in general. I clear this in advance with prepress, and I make it really clear in the notes.

If I don't know the shop that's printing a job I'll check the bejeezus out of it myself, wrap it up as a PDF/X1a and send it that way, with the native files only upon request.

Soon we'll see PDF/X4 as a deliverable format (Agfa, Heidelberg and Komori are all adding this to their RIPs, although none of my contacts have the upgrades yet). That's going to be fun to try out. No more Postscript... what a concept!

[carter the artist]

LOL on the 'open' file. :D
We call em Native files here.

You can tell Carter worked in Large format. Most who do prefer native files over pdf due to the inability of designers to apply the correct ICC profiles. Until online business start supplying those and designers learn how to use them, I have no worries that pre-press is here for my lifetime.

'
yep.

[Botchup]

Yes, charge.

You are in a 'profession' and "supposedly" so is the person sending you the file. This is what you specialise in, sorting out their crap. My previous job was at a prepress bureau which we mainly outputted native files to films/bromides all day long. (Well, the boss did that all day long, I did all the typesetting and design work... the dumb bastard)

Clients who supplied PDFs that were ready to go never got charged, as they went through like a breeze.

But the ones who had no idea, and supplied native files got charged a "setup" fee. (We eventually halved the fee for clients whose files were easy-peasy, just click print.)
This involved loading installing fonts, then checking the file against their supplied proof (because Microsoft Publisher/Word loves reformatting the document no matter which PC you take it too... oh yeah, I loved how Publisher never told you if WordArt was missing fonts...), checking line endings, configuring the job for a booklet fold imposition etc. etc.

Then doing all the crop marks, rego marks, colour bars... lots of work really when it's meant to be supplied as a "press-ready" PDF.

[chrispea56]

Our policy (not just in this shop, but others I have worked in) if the open file has missing fonts or links we will call the client/designer and tell them what we need. The longer it takes them to get the items too us, the more their deadline is in peril. If the file is wrong(no bleed, rgb images, whatever) we will call the client and tell them the problems and leave it to them to either correct it themselves (deadline!!!) or let us fix it at our normal rate. Dealing with publisher or word documents are considered wrong to begin with as most operators don't know what they are doing anyway, and those documents come with prepress time built into the quote.
If the client/designer is clueless they generally have us fix it, but that just means that their next project will probably have the same problems.http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/images/smilies/mad.gif

[budafist]

It seems like printers/prepress say charge and designers say please don't charge. Now why doesn't that surprise me? :D

[DesignVHL]

hey now! :P I have no problem with you charging me if my files are not in good order - if I screwed up, didn't follow the printers instructions, have changes, or have missing fonts, images, or whatever, then charge me all you want! BUT if I supply perfect files to the printer, why should I be charged? If PDF is the way to go, fine, but I've only had one printer specifiy that as a prefered format, the rest have all requested native files, so thats what I give them - after preflight and checkin' it twice! :) I know a lot of designers DO mess up, some just don't KNOW HOW to do it right, some don't care, some just need it to get out the door and move too fast, some were never properly taught...penalize them, not me! *if your not properly taught, and you know it - take the time to learn the rights, and don't complain! :) peace!

[Liquid Layers]

wow, that's stupid on the side of looking out for your customer. I prefer to deal with just open (I say native) files. Pdf's and such tend to have too many problems (especially when you need to do minute corrections.) that I have learned (both as a designer and pre press) it makes sense to use native and send a pdf along with it...

I was always taught to say "Native," or "Working" and I was confused at first about what "open" file meant; I wasn't sure if we were talking about an inkscapes file or something like that at first. So I learned something.

Anyways, I had the benefit of a great teacher in high school, and she always insisted that we handed in our assignments as both a PDF, and a working file, and I have developed good file handling habits because of this. Also, you have the option of preserving Illustrator editing capabilities when you save the PDF for last minute corrections.

[Ned]

Also, you have the option of preserving Illustrator editing capabilities when you save the PDF for last minute corrections.
I don't understand the point of that. Why would you want to make your press-ready PDF 20 times larger? If you're going to do that, just send an AI file, not a PDF. The whole point of "Press-Ready" is that it's complete and ready for print. It doesn't need to be changed.

Oh, and as far as your confusion about "Open Files"... Blame those crazy Aussies and their weird talk. :D

[jimking]

I don't understand the point of that. Why would you want to make your press-ready PDF 20 times larger? If you're going to do that, just send an AI file, not a PDF. The whole point of "Press-Ready" is that it's complete and ready for print. It doesn't need to be changed.

Oh, and as far as your confusion about "Open Files"... Blame those crazy Aussies and their weird talk. :D
I've gotten into the habit of calling them raw files. Where did I pick that up I wonder.:confused: :)

[Liquid Layers]

I don't understand the point of that. Why would you want to make your press-ready PDF 20 times larger? If you're going to do that, just send an AI file, not a PDF. The whole point of "Press-Ready" is that it's complete and ready for print. It doesn't need to be changed.

Oh, and as far as your confusion about "Open Files"... Blame those crazy Aussies and their weird talk. :D

Well, it's easy enough for me to just check the box; better safe than sorry, I can be forgetful at times. At this young point in my career file size has yet to be an issue.

[Drazan]

We charge a set up fee, if the files sent to us need to be cleaned up/converted for the wide format printer.

One time we did get an 8.5 x 11 PDF which was supposed to be printed on a 4' x 8' sheet. ... we sent it back.

There's two other printer places we work with that have an open file upcharge added into the bill.

Jade

[Ned]

At this young point in my career file size has yet to be an issue.

Hehe... You'll see. :D

[Eggles1]

Oh, and as far as your confusion about "Open Files"... Blame those crazy Aussies and their weird talk. :D

Since Buda is from New Zealand, calling her an Aussie is like calling you - a Canadian - an American.

Here in Australia, what Buda called an open file, would be termed a 'native' file. I had no idea what an 'open' file was until I'd read a few of the messages.

Edit: I forgot to say that, as a designer, I send printers a CD containing both a Press Quality PDF with printers marks, as well as the InDesign Package (carefully checked for all links and fonts being correct) from which the PDF was made. But since I rarely get to send files to the same printer twice in a row -with known specs - (my workplace has a policy of requesting quotes from 3 printers for every job, and because it's not up to me who gets chosen) I've given up trying to keep up with the various specs, so I just send both. Some printers prefer the native files, some prefer PDFs. I've not had any complaints or extra charges by supplying both. It's up to the printer which they choose to actually print from.

When I worked in prepress, my boss was too scared to lose customers who sent in crap files that i would have to fix (sometimes completely redo) to charge them extra, and it drove me crazy. But I figured if I was being paid no matter whether I was required to spend time on fixing files or sending them straight to the service bureau for films (yes, it was that long ago) why should I care? But she was a stupid boss who wouldn't lift a finger to get new customers. I wonder if she's still in business?

[Ned]

Since Buda is from New Zealand, calling her an Aussie is like calling you - a Canadian - an American.

Ah, but I do consider myself an American. :D

I have lived in the U.S. for a good deal of my life, and feel a much closer connection there, than I do here. But I do get what you're saying. ;)

[Liquid Layers]

Yeah, it's the New Zealanders, that makes sense. I bet it has something to do with all the sheep.

[hewligan]

Yeah, it's the New Zealanders, that makes sense. I bet it has something to do with all the sheep.
One day Australians will be smart enough to know two jokes... :p

[Alan G]

Hey, we all know about the well-balanced Australian: a chip on both shoulders. That's balanced by the fact that Kiwis don't come from the mainland... <ducks for cover>

[Rizz]

One time we did get an 8.5 x 11 PDF which was supposed to be printed on a 4' x 8' sheet. ... we sent it back.

This is one reason I quit my old pre-press job. We were expected to make a 8.5 x 11 work on a 4 x 8... without charging more. The salesman didn't care how long it took, he'd already got his commission on the job, right off the top of the quote.

-Rizz