In small shops, job printers may be responsible for composition and page layout, reading proofs for errors and clarity, correcting mistakes and printing. With traditional photographic processes, the material is arranged and typeset, and then passed on to workers who further prepare it for the presses. Then the text is printed out in columns. Pasteup artists cut and arrange the text and illustrations onto a board. When the text is in its final form, workers make a photographic negative that will be used to create a printing plate.
Camera operators are workers who make photographic images of the material.
These workers include line camera operators, halftone operators, or color separation photographers. Line camera operators first photograph the material and develop the film in a series of chemical baths. The printing process requires that images be made up of tiny dots coming together to form a picture. Halftone camera operators separate the photograph into pictures containing the dots. More of this separation work will be done electronically in the future on scanners.