Digital Printing and the "Print As" option Follow
When specing a job in Printer's Plan you can make a selection in the Print As field of the paper service.
The options provided are.
- Blank (Calculates as Signature)
- Regular
- Work and Turn
- Work and Tumble
- Work and Whirl
- Signature
- Work and Signature
The "Work and Turn/Tumble/Whirl/Signature" section describes various ways that you may be turning or flipping your piece to print depending on your plates. This information doesn't affect calculations but may be important for the print operator to correctly orient the artwork.
On a digital job, if the Print As the field is Blank or set to Signature the program will maximize the number of originals on a run size sheet.
If the Print As the field is set to Regular the program will calculate the job using the same original on a run size sheet.
Below is an example of this, with the top being Signature and the bottom being Regular. The letters on this example will be your multiple originals and the numbers will an instance of that same original.
You can see on the top Signature puts as many copies of an original as it can one sheet while Regular puts as many instances of one original as it can on one sheet. This can increase the number of sheets you need for printing of course but it could also affect other processes in your workflow. For instance with Signature, you may have to sort the Originals after they have been cut.
If you would like to make sure your jobs have the Print As selected change the following setting to Yes:
Settings > Job Options > On digital jobs alert me if the Print As Method is Blank?
This will show a popup if you have not configured this option.