One place, not separate tools

The usual way

A job passes through several tools. A designer's layout is made without knowing your stock, a separate step makes a cut file, somebody checks the sheet by eye, and the operator at the press finds a problem the layout tool could not see: a sticker that will not kiss-cut because the stock has no liner, a piece too close to a registration mark, a sheet wider than the roll.

Each tool is fine at its own job. What goes wrong is what falls between them.

What Studio Cloud does

• It asks about the stock first. The stock decides what the press can do. So a product the stock cannot make is not offered, a stock with no liner is never offered a kiss-cut, and a missing Quick Set shows in red on the stock's card.
• The cut line is the line the cutter gets. It is drawn round each piece, traced, taken from your file or drawn by hand, and never redrawn behind your back once you have moved it.
• The sheet is checked against the stock. Width of the roll, the stock's maximum, the smallest piece the cutter can cut, the smallest gap the blade can separate, the grip margin and the registration marks' clear bands are all checked as stops.
• Pieces are packed by their outline, and Studio tells you how many sheets that saved.
• A preflight stands between the layout and the press, with a fix beside each finding and Fix these issues to clear them in one go.
• What goes to the press is shown before it goes. The hand-over lists the file, every separation and every page.

What it means for a shop

• Fewer jobs that fail at the press for a reason the screen could have said.
• One place to look, so a job is not two files in two states.
• A layout that stays true, because the screen, the preflight and the print file are made from the same placements.

What it does not do

It is not a design tool. Your designer's artwork comes in as a file, and Studio lays it out, cuts it and checks it.

Read more

Start with the stock, Cut lines, kiss-cut and bleed and The preflight.