When I first started working in the Printing Industry 13 years ago things were much different. At that time all the printing jobs came in pasted up on artboards. When we got a computer it was to do regular office work like word processing and spreadsheets. Then came Pagemaker, Photoshop and Quark. Everything started to change. We started with an SE and now we have a Power Mac 8500. Now when we get an artboard we have a puzzled look on our faces and wonder what we're going to do with it! What I hope to do here is to help you to understand how desktop publishing relates to offset printing. Though the internet has taken off like a shot, the print medium is still relied upon to reach the greatest number of people to get your message across. My hope is to help you to work with your printer to produce your creations to your satisfaction. So what is color prepress? It is all the processes involved in preparing your art to be printed on a printing press. So, I think maybe the first thing to discuss would be offset printing.