"The 'Digital Age' has empowered designers to create their own images, set their own type, and even make their own traps. It also makes us more liable for potential printing errors than ever before. Knowing your tools and how to use them has never been more essential."

So says Clifford Stoltze, in one of the quotes from prepress professionals that introduce each chapter of this guide to digital prepress processes. If you are the kind of person who loses sleep on days when your jobs go to press, if you have bad dreams about four-colour separation and colour management, if casting your eye over proofs gives you an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach, then you need this book. If none of that is the case, you must be in a different line of work, or possibly you've already read it.

There used to be people to do this stuff for us, but as Stoltze points out, these days responsibility for almost every aspect of a print job lies with the designer. The Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide provides practical explanations of prepress technologies using language that even the least technically aware will be comfortable with. For emergencies there is a glossary at the back.

So if your job now depends on knowing the difference between under colour removal and gray component replacement, or you just want to know what resolution to scan at, this will prove an invaluable reference. --Ken McMahon