Ever wonder what happens before a custom-made print leaves our shop? After a print is made, we don’t just pop it into a box and cross our fingers. We check for quality control at every step of the production cycle.
Pre-Press Quality Check
Before we even begin the printing process, quality assurance starts to make sure we don’t waste our and your time producing a print that won’t look good. To do this our prepress team looks at each file to ensure:
- Evaluate if the image file has a high enough PPI to produce a quality print
- Identify any imperfections in the image itself that may need to be corrected (we offer Photoshop services as well)
- Confirm that the image will translate well to the desired medium
Should we find any issues at this stage, we reach out to you directly and discuss how it’s best to proceed. While we don’t make it a habit of turning down business, if an image won’t print up to our standards or our customers we will typically propose an alternative.
Printing Quality Assurance
Our advanced commercial-grade printers are routinely cleaned and maintained up to or beyond the manufacturers’ recommendations to ensure that before the printing process even begins we’re confident in the end result.
Once a print is made it goes through a rigorous visual inspection by one of our experienced artisan printmakers. They look at things such as:
- Color matching – whether it perfectly reproduces the colors
- Image detail – whether it captures the fine image detail
- Print quality – whether the quality of the print is up to standards
In the rare case that imperfections are found, the print is scrapped and the process starts over again. Because of the speed of production, this usually doesn’t result in a delay in delivery
Post-Finishing Inspection
Once a print is made and passes quality assurance it’s sent on to be “finished” be it mounting, trimming, or packaging, and is another opportunity to verify the print is ready for the customer. We quadruple-check the accuracy of the final result to the job ticket and do an additional quality check of the print itself. Only then do we carefully package it up, scan it in for shipping, apply the labels, and send it on its way to you.
What Happens If Your Print Is Damaged During Shipping?
What if it gets there and is damaged in shipping? No worries, we will handle the entire process for you. All we need is a few photos of the box and the damage to the print and we will make a new print right away (no charge), send it out, and handle the shipping claim in the meantime. Still curious about our superior quality control? Check out our many reviews here!
“More than Printing, we’re Artisan”