There is an interesting article titled, “When do you need to preflight; the ROI discussion” which has some excellent points about preflx3h xvn/=\][pwqighting. For instance, they say;

“The need for preflighting depends on the workflow and the job type. Magazine publishers will want to preflight early in the publishing process because they have no idea where the layout files they receive (adverts, classifieds, etc., for example) come from, and what the skill level of the layout designer of the file was.

For them and for newspaper publishers, preflighting must be done well before the file is converted to PDF. That indeed saves them huge amounts of money trying to correct the file downstream. Here, applications like Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional are essential.”
SOURCE: http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/1430/

Here, they hit it right on the spot. Yet, then comes the part where I must disagree with- at least in part. With regards to book publishers, they give this example of why early preflighting may not be needed, in their eyes (And in the authors defense, this is a common misconception);

“Book publishers generally don’t need early preflighting either, although on-demand book publishers may require their book authors to check the documents they deliver –when they have been readily designed by an external designer hired by the author– for errors. That way they can avoid the most common errors. Preflighting with the built-in tools of Indesign or QuarkXPress only, probably won’t cut it. But with book publishers where the layout design is controlled in-house, the needs change.

In fact, there’s even a reason not to early preflight in those cases. Even with the best preflighting application, some errors may slip through the mazes of the net if the layout file hasn’t been first output to the PDF that will serve as the print master. Therefore, creating a PDF master –a process which doesn’t cost a lot of time these days– is the most dependable and best way to ensure that a preflight check will find all errors.”
SOURCE: http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/1430/

This is simply not the case. Book publishers have some the most complex and often extended workflows there are. They have people delivering jobs in various document formats and types. Often each chapter is done by a different author in many cases a book may be comprised of  Adobe InDesign, QuarkXpress, Microsoft Word, Publisher and PDF files. Images may end-up being adapted in-house or out-sourced. The same with electronic illustrations and other artwork. Then we come to the PDF creation stage, way far away from all of the action which just took place. This will generally happen in the Production Department- which just got the job from the Layout Department, which got the text from the Editorial Department and the artwork and images from the Design Department as well as sometimes out-side sources.

If you leave the “preflight” down to just making a PDF at the end and then postflighting it with PitStop or Acrobat, then you are taking a great chance of major delays… what happens when the artwork on page 13 is not correct? They have to, in many cases by company policy, contacting the Design Department to re-do it or make the necessary changes (depending on what the problem is.).

Thus, you can see the need for preflight at many stages within a book publishing workflow. Naturally every workflow is different, thus indeed advice can only be generalized. However quality, as Dr. Demming once said, “is everyones responsibility.” So please, preflight early and preflight often!

Tags: FlightCheck, InDesign, Markzware, PitStop, postflight, preflight ROI, preflighting, preflighting early, publishers, Quark, QuarkXPress, ROI

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 3:43 am and is filed under Markzware News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.