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A customer is insisting we use a scan of a poor quality bar code for their job. We have told the customer that the scan of the bar code would not be of sufficient quality to ensure readability. Do you have any information on quality for printing barcodes?

Bar codes should be created with software that generates vector files. A vector file is a mathematical formula, which is interpreted by the RIP and creates a high-quality image at the RIP's resolution. Scanning an existing bar to a bitmap file is not going to provide the same quality as a vector generated …

My newest publication customer is adding quality requirements to their multi-year contract and has asked me to supply the industry standard for registration tolerances. Does anything exist like that for heatset web offset printing?

I wish it did because then we'd have a better answer for the many questions we receive about standards and specifications for print quality. The truth, however, is that there are virtually no specific standards that cover print quality due to all of the different raw materials and the lack of quality …