Thanks a lot Zox for taking the time to answer my questions.
I have to say, I still feel responsibility should largely lie with the print shop for ensuring that the artwork I provide is going to at least reproduce acceptably on their equipment. I had to pay a compulsory "proofing charge" and to me that should include a once-over of the artwork for any obvious problems. BTW, maybe I didn't make it clear - by "digital proof" I meant a soft copy pdf - i.e. not really a proof at all! The expensive hard copy proof was something I enquired about and not something I was encouraged to take advantage of. All indications were that the artwork was fine and there was no need for a hard copy proof.
Incidentally, I believe the equipment used was a flexo press and from searching the web I see that this sort of press can have a high dot gain and the tonal jump from 0% to 1% is very big. This is illustrated in the following graphic:
http://www.esko.com/files/images/pro...-flexobump.gif
Indeed, I stumbled across a tool from Esko called FlexoFix which is designed to prepare offset-images for flexography printing:
http://www.esko.com/product.asp?id=108
Although I appreciate that the above link is a marketing spiel for Esko's product this link does provide a very good overview of flexo printing issues and does suggest that preparing an image for flexo printing has its own special challenges. From reading this spiel about Flexofix and from reading around on the web about flexo printing I do feel that the printer should take a degree of responsibility for the prepress work involved in ensuring the plates produced from the source image are going to produce a reasonable quality image on their particular equipment, especially since the plates are expensive and there is no going back once they are made. In my mind, responsibility for quality checking (+ minor corrections) to the client's artwork should be "all part of the service sir". Even if making "minor corrections" is not all part of the service they should at least be spotted and conveyed to the client.
Anyway, maybe a forum of prepress specialists is not the place to argue that the responsibility lies with them :wink:
To be fair to you Zox you did say you usually pick up these sorts of problems and flag them to the client so perhaps you do consider it all part of the service - although as you say, if you happen to miss a problem its never your fault...of course :wink:
Incidentally, the Flexofix plugin for Photoshop sounds like just the job but I don't suppose it very affordable for the end user? It seems to be aimed at the flexo printing industry, but then why would they need such a tool if the responsibility for producing "plate-ready" artwork lies with the client :roll: :wink: Anyway, enough of my sarcasm
Thanks again for having taken the time to answer my questions - it is much appreciated!
