Prepress
Acme Printing prides itself as being a leader in the Electronic Prepress area. In 1991, Acme was one of the first commercial printers in Des Moines to establish desktop publishing. Acme Printing led the way again in 1998 as the first commercial printer in Iowa to install computer-to-plate technology.

The Prepress department includes a full-time graphic designer and other desktop professionals who are responsible for design, color correction, typesetting, proofreading, and outputting. Our Prepress experts are available to provide training on software and techniques to eliminate errors, file problems and on how to build files more effectivel.

Acme Printing uses the Epson 9880 and Epson 4880 to provide color proofing that delivers a high-resolution realistic proof that is a very close match to our actual press sheets.

Our two-sided proofing system is done with an Improof, which uses two Canon IPF 8000 large format printers.

We have a very solid backup and archive system of all jobs brought to us electronically. Our server is backed up every night on DLT tapes. In addition, all digital jobs, once they have been shipped, are copied to a pair of DVDs. One remains in our Prepress department for future reference and the other is placed in our vault (in another building) as a backup.

The Prepress department maintains a secure FTP site for the transfer of files electronically. If you are a customer of Acme Printing and wish to have your own FTP account, click here.

Computer-to-Plate (CTP) is the most important new technology to hit the printing industry in years, offering improvements in both quality and productivity.

With our Rip Once Outut Many (ROOM) Workflow Technology, you can be sure what you see on your proofs is what will print on the plates.

CTP improves quality because digitally imaged dots are sharp and do not suffer from optical dot gain problems that result from making plates from film. The benefits are immediately noticeable in highlight and shadow areas, as details that would normally disappear become visible. The crisp dots on the plate print sharp on press, which allows the press operators to print higher, ink densities resulting in rich vibrant color.