Big files, tight deadlines, and a lot of back and forth
Prepress and packaging teams move print-ready PDFs and layered artwork of hundreds of megabytes to several gigabytes each, high-resolution image libraries, and dielines, between the brand, the studio and a press that is often in another city. A job that arrives with the wrong name, a missing font or an RGB file where CMYK was expected costs a round of emails and a day.
Email cannot carry the files, consumer sharing links stall over distance and give the press no record, and an FTP server accepts anything without asking what it is.
Jobs come in correctly, the first time
An upload portal is a request link a customer uses to send a job into a folder you choose, with a form: job number and required fields, dropdowns, file-type and naming rules checked before the upload starts, a maximum file count, and a deadline with invited uploaders, a reminder 48 hours before and an overdue nudge. Each job lands in its own dated inbox folder with the answers attached, and both sides get an email when it completes.
Delivery specs per portal or folder flag off-spec files on arrival, so a file that does not match the job is marked before anyone opens it. Portals and share pages carry your logo, colour and a line of your own, on your own domain (Scale and above).
Proofs approved on the delivery page
Send a proof as a share link. The brand owner opens a page, sees a preview of every image and PDF without downloading, and on Scale and above marks it up, approves or requests changes per file; approvers are reminded, and every decision lands on the receipt. Threads with @mentions keep the conversation on the file rather than in an inbox. Once approved, the press receives its own link with an expiry, an optional password and a download limit, and the receipt shows who downloaded which file and when, with per-file checksums.
A worked example
A 3 GB print-ready PDF reaches the workspace from a studio on Pro, over a 1 Gbps line, in about a minute, plan-limited at 450 Mbps. A 50 GB image library for a catalogue takes about fifteen minutes on the same plan and line. What the press sees on the way down depends on the distance and loss on its side; the calculator on the home page models it.
- Portals with a form: job number, required fields, file-type and naming rules, deadline with reminders
- Delivery specs that flag off-spec files on arrival
- Review and approval on the delivery page, with image and PDF mark-up (Scale and above)
- Receipts with per-file checksums; branded pages on your own domain (Scale and above)
- Line-rate transfers; desktop-app resume; no per-GB fees
Fits the studio and the press
Transfers run over an accelerated transfer engine on UDP with its own rate control, at your line rate whatever the distance. The desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux resumes by itself after a drop, sleep, restart or quit, moves whole job folders, sends from Finder or Explorer with a right click, and a watch folder on the output folder ships approved artwork on its own once it has stopped changing. Projects group a job’s links, portals and proofs with dates and status, and automations (Scale and above) can turn a landed folder into a delivery link or post to Slack the moment files arrive.