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, scanner technician, color correction technician and other desktop professionals who are responsible for design, scanning, 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 effectively.

Photographs and transparencies are digitized by use of the drum scanner or the flat bed scanner. The scanned piece can then be digitally cleaned, cropped, or color corrected at the request of the customer.

Still have projects in old analog film format? No problem, we can digitize film using our CopyDot scanner. This scanner provides the technology to convert photographs and pre-screened film into digital data. The scanner reproduces digitally every single dot or line present in the film at very high resolution.

Acme Printing uses the PolaProof Digital Halftone Proofing System as our contract color-proofing device. The Polaroid PolaProof delivers a high-resolution, realistic proof that matches the actual press sheet with unparalleled accuracy. The result is a crisp, accurate dot with real halftone dot structure representing the same dot that will expose to the plate. Proofs made on the system show very little dot gain, which matches the low dot gain of CTP plates.

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 CDs. 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. Contact your account executive to have FTP credentials issue for your own FTP log-in.

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.