A day in the life of a Repro Mac Operator apprentice

Ryan Cope

Repro Mac Operator Apprentice, The Sherwood Group

Hi, my name is Ryan Cope and I work for the Sherwood Group as a Repro Mac Operator. The main role of our department is to process customer-supplied files and make sure that they are print ready, then imposing sheets of print to a job specification and outputting lithographic plates for the printing presses.

As an apprentice in this role I came into the repro department with little knowledge about the prepress processes. I gained the knowledge by working with the employees in the department, which allowed me to start processing my own jobs. While working in the repro department you find yourself using a variety of different software like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Artpro. All of these require you to have the correct knowledge so that you can process the customers’ files correctly.

Once I started in repro I found that mistakes were being made due to my lack of training or knowledge about print, doing an apprenticeship allowed me to gain that knowledge, and helped me develop my skills so that I could output my work to a high standard.