Camera ready copy

[C Tate]

Hope this doesn't seem a slightly off the wall question! But if somebody
asks for 'camera ready copy' in Word what exactly do they mean?!!!!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

They mean copy that will be reproduced exactly. Although printing nowadays
is often "computer-to-plate" (meaning that the printer will want your
document as an electronic file of some sort), old-fashioned offset printers
make their plates by photographing typeset copy.

I've prepared a lot of CRC in my day (that's what I prefer to do, in fact),
and this can be handled in various ways. If you have a printer that is
capable of 1200 dpi, that's plenty good enough for CRC (even high-resolution
imagesetters use only 2400, I think), and 600 dpi is usually not too bad for
text.

Sometimes, however, you'll be asked to create CRC that is some fixed
percentage larger than the ultimate output, and the printer will "shoot it
down" to the correct size (which increases the effective resolution). This
is especially practical if you're printing a standard octavo book (usually
about 6" x 9") and preparing the copy on Letter-sized paper.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hope this doesn't seem a slightly off the wall question! But if
somebody asks for 'camera ready copy' in Word what exactly do they
mean?!!!!

In offset printing (the cheapest, easiest method), someone uses a press
camera to take a picture of each original page. Through several steps the
negative from that camera is used to make printing plates that apply ink to
sheets of paper. The original page is "camera ready" when it contains all
the text and graphics that should be in the final printing, and nothing
else. (Technically, since the film in the press camera is insensitive to
light blue, it's possible to write comments on camera ready pages with light
blue pencil. This is usually allowed only in the margins, though.) It means
a spell-check has been done, all corrections have been made, all fonts and
formatting are in place, headers and footers are included, etc.

This isn't exclusively a Word thing -- in fact, once you've used the
computer printer to put a Word document on paper, it doesn't matter whether
the pages came from Word or from Mars. In fact, I would never say that a
document is "camera ready" while it exists only as an electronic document.

The amount of work needed to convert camera ready copy into printing plates,
and the extra work and expense that may be needed to fix errors after that
stage, mean that you have to be very sure that everything is right before
you say the pages are "camera ready".

 

[C Tate]

Thank you both very much indeed for such helpful replies. Is there anything
I can refer to to learn even more about this? (It sounds like just making
sure your document is perfect for the camera though there are sometimes
other considerations such as the CRC being a fixed percentage larger than
the ultimate output).

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In the "olden days" when I created documents on a typewriter, CRC was
routinely "shot down" because typewriter text was large and ungainly and
illustrations that weren't necessarily perfect were enhanced by reduction.
In those days, graphs, drawings, photographs, etc., had to be pasted up on
the CRC. If you'd ever visited a newspaper or an ad agency, you would have
seen people "making up pages" in this way. Creating a document using page
layout software (or even word processing software such as Word) is
exponentially easier than it was in those days!

 

[Jezebel]

Not nearly as much fun, though. Don't you miss the smell of wax, or all
those hours spent Letrasetting the headings?

 

[Jay Freedman]

You used wax? We used rubber cement -- almost as much fun as cannabis!
We had a little photosetter for headlines, but we did use tons of
Letraset for labeling illustrations. I still have a box of it tucked
away under my desk (not far from the slide rule).

 

[Jezebel]

Rubber cement was a buzz, indeed, (although I have grave doubts about the
quality your cannabis!) ... but a waxing machine was what the pros all used.

I'll bet your Letraset's lost all its serifs by now.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I did this only in an amateurish sort of way. I used rubber cement, too,
though also flirted with glue sticks and spray adhesive and roll-on
adhesives of various sorts. It would have helped tremendously to have a
light box, something I acquired only after my need for it was largely over
(I had to depend on eyeballing and windowpanes). But my paste-ups were not
for CRC--just manuscripts.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

LOL - this thread certainly brought back some memories . In the 1970s ICL
provided cans of rubber cement for the odd occasions when the authors did
their own CRC. I can remember a colleague literally falling over in
hysterics at the end of a long afternoon pasting in pictures of data entry
forms. (I also remember when the cleaners, searching for coins or snacks in
someone's top drawer, left a poorly lidded can on its side ... ).

When we got into CRC in a big way here in the 80s we quickly found that
sticking graphics into hundreds of pages of troff output and meeting
printers' deadlines demanded a proper scalpel, wax roller kit and a
home-made light box.

By that stage we had an artist producing graphics on the Mac and had left
the Rotring and the Letraset behind - I think the Letraset finally got
thrown out when it started spattering tiny shards in the drawer with the
slide rule!

 

[Jezebel]

troff output .... now there's a glimmer from a murky past. Even the
hard-coded error messages were witty.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You make me quite envious. I was always intrigued by the way things were
done in proper setups, but I never had the equipment myself (or really any
need for it, since I was producing only MS). But my grandfather was a
printer, so I did get to have my name cast in Linotype every summer, wander
amongst the presses, play with the perforating machine, watch the folder
(whose operations were nothing short of miraculous, but too rapid to
fathom), and (as sternly warned) stay strictly clear of the guillotine.

 

[Graham Mayor]

My grandfather (and father) was a printer also so I had the same childhood
experiences of wandering around his premises - and that guillotine used to
give me nightmares. Even today I would not wish to go near such a device
50 years on and I can still smell the hot lead, ink and paper dust. Happy
days

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, the printer I use now has this wonderfully computerized guillotine
that I am happy to watch him use. It has all kinds of modern OSHA-approved
safety protections, of course.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Now you are making me envious ;-) I think ICL was still on hot type for the
manuals printed 'properly' (as opposed to rubber glued masters for short
runs) when I first joined, but I didn't ever get to see the print works. (If
things were urgent enough, authors travelled to Letchworth to do their page
proofing and indexing while the presses waited, but mine all had relatively
leisurely turn round.)

As far as a proper equipment was concerned - well, we did find the wax
roller a really worthwhile investment, but the 'studio' was a converted
outhouse, the cutting board borrowed from the kitchen, and the working bench
the top of the chest freezer ;-)

 

[C Tate]

And there was me thinking I had asked a dumb question!