Patent ID: 8687221

Claim:
A machine-implemented method of planning inspection of printed material produced according to a printing workflow, the printing workflow including a production stage, and one or more of a design stage, a prepress stage, and a finishing stage, the method comprising: automatically or semi-automatically generating inspection instructions specific to a printing job using data used or produced during one or more stages of the printing workflow, including during one or more of the design stage, the prepress stage and the finishing stage, wherein the inspection instructions include instructions that define inspection of printed material created in the printing job according to the printing workflow, and wherein the semi-automatically generating, if there is any, includes automatically generating and generating using at least one interaction with at least one human participant of the printing workflow; combining the generated job-specific inspection instructions to form a job-specific inspection script comprising machine-readable information, including machine-readable commands related to the printed material produced in the job according to the printing workflow; wherein the job-specific inspection script when provided to a processing system coupled to or included in an inspection system for inspecting printed material produced in the job according to the printing workflow, causes, when the provided commands are executed, the inspection system to carry out one or more inspection tasks on instances of the printed material, each instance comprising a single or repeated printed pattern that includes content and layout, and wherein the inspection system comprises one or more sensors, each sensor operative to perform one or more measurements on at least one section of instances of the printed material.