Preparing files for print
Paper has opinions, and it voices them late — usually the evening before a launch. This is the checklist every file passes before it leaves the studio, learned the expensive way across six editions.
Proof the ink, not the screen
Cobalt on a monitor is a rumour. Cobalt on cotton is a fact. I proof every edition as a quarter-scale strip on the final paper, under the same daylight bulb the packing table uses. Bloom Grid took eleven strips; the heart went from grey-mauve to glowing white somewhere around strip eight.
The checklist
One: margins held for the frame sizes people actually own. Two: the palest mark in the piece still visible at arm’s length — Star Sphere’s far-side dust fails this constantly and has to be lifted. Three: blacks mixed, never pure, so the ground swallows light instead of reflecting it. Four: sign in pencil, emboss blind, number in the same sitting, or the editions drift.
Do all four and the print that arrives looks like the picture in your head. Skip one and the paper will tell everyone.