VDP: Web-to-Print In the Real World

For these and other reasons, John Roberds, president of Odyssey Digital Printing, opted to use Web-to-print vendors on the front end, rather than investing in an in-house system.

“Web-to-print vendors want to build what they call ‘print ready’ files, but they seem to think printers only operate in multiples of an 8.5x11˝ format,” he says. “With the exception of my black-and-white laser printing system, all of my machines have something other than that. It took me a while, but I got our two Web-to-print service providers to send me a one-up file with no cut-marks, and we lay out the file to suit the machine that will print it. But I had to pound the table a bit to make it happen.”