Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group talks to us at PRINT 09 in this video on how he uses FlightCheck Professional AND Adobe Acrobat to preflight his incoming files for their print workflow. He uses both; but prefers FlightCheck (for everything first) due to it’s ease-of-use and support of more than 50 file formats such as InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, PDF and others. Much more effective to preflight before outputting to PDF:

In the last segment, you see Doug Rosen, Markzware project manager, going into some advanced details with Jon on font search paths for helping optimize your font preflighting in FlightCheck. FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is now shipping with CS4 and Quark8 support. See:
http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_…

The reason it was so great to hear Jon’s comments, is that some out there in the graphic arts industry, or what is it called now, “print media“, like to think that it is best to funnel this multi-step process called preflight to the very end of the workflow and even some are trying to automate preflight checking. It is however, largely a human process which requires a simple checklist to work best and should be done at every step in the graphics workflow where the layout file switches hands or is due to be output (see preflight defined). As Dr. Demming said on quality assurance,

“Quality is everyone’s responsibility.”

Zevrix is known for their Adobe Plugin to preflight InDesign files called InPreflight, similar to the built-in function within the CS4 only version itself (Live Preflighting) which Adobe offers. We call that process more a midflight check, as opposed to a preflight on your native files or artwork. And certainly not a postflight on a PDF or processed document. So it was with interest that we read this about a new automated solution from this software developer for that postflight process:

PDF Checkpoint 1.0 Public Beta ******************************* Zevrix Solutions introduces PDF Checkpoint – a new quality control and automation solution for PDF files. PDF Checkpoint 1.0 is currently in Public Beta stage and offers the following features: - Quickly preflight multiple PDF files – Create preflight profiles to detect common problems – List all PDF fonts, color spaces, images and document properties – Preview  and list resolution of PDF images More features are planned to be added – and It’s your chance to request features required for your PDF workflow: - Routing of PDF files depending on preflight results – Split PDF – Extract PDF images PDF Checkpoint 1.0 Public Beta can be downloaded here: http://zevrix.com/download.php  Read more... (280 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

Making a print-ready Acrobat 9 or similar PDF file can be tricky. Naturally, quality control or preflight should be a key part of any graphic design or publishing workflow. This said, here is a good initiative I came across while cruising the Graphicstart collection of RSS feeds:

Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Updates Require New GWG Guidelines for PDF Creation from Office Applications

To make it easier and faster to get quality results in PDFs created from Office applications, the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) has issued new best practice process guidelines. The new guidelines were developed in response to recent changes made to Office applications and the Adobe Acrobat family of products.

The new Office Printing PDF Creator Guidelines are available for free download at: http://gwg.org/Office_Document_Printing_-1.phtml

Says Menno Mooji, co-chairman of the GWG Office Document Printing Subcommittee and a founder of ISI Publishing Innovators, “With the software changes in Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 and Adobe Acrobat 9, new ways of creating predictable PDFs are now possible. As a result, we’ve released a document outlining best practices that cater to the new developments.
Source: http://www.quickprinting.com/web/online/Industry-News-and-Trends/Microsoft-Office-and-Adobe-Acrobat-Updates-Require-New-GWG-Guidelines-for-PDF-Creation-from-Office-Applications/1$10765  Read more... (217 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)

Here is an nice initiative from a print-shop in the U.K.- online school for print buyers:

Manchester-based printer Frederik Law has launched an online ‘Print School’ aimed at helping customers get the most out of the medium.
The print school section of the company’s website offers a resource for those new to design and small business owners to help them get to grips with print terminology. It also includes best practice guides that are open for users to comment on and ask questions.

Frederick Law managing director Nicky Acton said: “Quite frequently our customers are unsure what certain printing terms mean, we are more than happy to explain but felt an online resource would be helpful.

“We also find it common for graphic designers new to print to send us what they consider to be print ready documents, yet they are missing vital things such as crop marks and bleed. By providing an online print school we are offering our knowledge and experience with an opportunity for people to comment or ask questions.”
Source: PrintWeek UK

You can check out the informative, educational site on how to prepare files for print and output to Adobe PDF here:  Read more... (236 words, 1 image, estimated 57 secs reading time)

When reading a status update from Scott Abel (ContentWrangler.com) on Linkedin.com, I came across this headline, “[Publishing] The Printed Blog is dead (already)” which naturally caught my attention. We can read more about why ThePrintedBlog.com stopped here:

“It is with great sadness that I must report that, due to a lack of outside investment capital, The Printed Blog is ceasing publication….

Last year, I had an idea. I wondered what would happen if some of the business model principles that work online were applied to the troubled newspaper industry. The more I thought about it, the more the curiosity got to me. So I registered a domain name, developed an action plan, and started the process of building a new kind of newsprint publication.

Everyone said I was nuts, but I did it anyway.

Creating a new breed of newsprint publication from scratch was an amazing experience, and it was humbling to have been so prominently included in the global discussion on the future of journalism and the print media….
Source: http://graphicstart.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=367  Read more... (293 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

Here is a great survey on PDF preflight, that which many also call postflight, which was introduced in this blog post:

Posted by Marco on Jun 23, 2009 in cPDF
In 2008 Enfocus wanted to find out who exactly their clients were. They held a survey. 4.840 users responded. Now who was using what kind of software and on what platform? Where do they live? What’s their primary business? How frequently do they use PDF-files? Do they even check incoming PDF files? And… what were the errors those files contained? See: http://www.digital-engineer.net/archive/entry/preflighters-around-the-world-this-is-you/

The most common preflight problems with PDF print-jobs.

About half have see their print destined PDF’s failing often and the most common problems are non embedded fonts, low res image usage and RGB color space used. Exactly what the problems were about fifteen years ago (Replace non-embedded fonts with missing fonts.) when Markzware first brought out FlightCheck Professional, which can postflight PDF files from Adobe Acrobat (and other software’s) as well as a range of source or native files like XPress, InDesign, MSPublisher and more. View the full survey results here.

Specials going on FlightCheck- save 20-50%! See:
http://www.markzware.com/promotions/  Read more... (208 words, 1 image, estimated 50 secs reading time)

Just realized, Print 09 in Chicago is just around the corner, when reading this:

“EFI will display new modules for its print-management information software systems at the Print 09 exhibition, to be held from 11-16 September in Chicago.”
Source: http://www.printingtalk.com/news/efi/efi244.html

Don’t forget to mark your calendar for this big printing trade show. And of course stop by the Markzware booth #6542 and see FlightCheck, which can preflight Adobe Acrobat ( sometimes called Acrobat Adobe ), Q2ID and more… Follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date, as we tweet from the show floor as well!  We plan some cool things for the show this year and, as always Chicago is a nice place to visit.

Here was a nice little article and preflight checklist named, “Prepress Checklist : Use on Graphic Design Projects Sending Out to Printers.” Something to consider before printing color graphics or sending off your valuable graphics to be printed. It is more than just running an electronic quality assurance check on your Adobe Acrobat or InDesign files with their Live Prelight or Markzware’s FlightCheck application, but a process and dedication to perfection- in otherwords, “Prepress“:

PREFLIGHT CHECKLIST

___ The files are camera ready

-> HARD COPY (mark through if not needed)

___ Desktop printed files are done according to the printer’s instructions

___ Files are in order

___ Files are complete

___ Separations (if color)

___ Registration marks (if color)

___ Everything aligned

___ Headlines spelled correctly

-> ELECTRONIC COPY (mark through if not needed)

___ Everything aligned

___ Headlines spelled correctly

___ Headlines spelled correctly

___ Fonts embedded (PDF)

___ Art files included (for Non-PDF documents)

___ Proof copy for the press is supplied (if necessary)

___ The files are all on disk OR

___ Special instructions are included  Read more... (247 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

Here is an interesting piece from Dr. Joe of WhatTheyThink.com titled, “June 10 Economic Webinar Q&A.” This bit on the average number of employees at a printer and it’s potential relation to graphic designers taking on more of the role of prepress is what I wanted us to zoom in on here:

Q.  Is the average size of successful printing companies increasing or decreasing? Sales volume and or employee count as a measure.

A. Sales are down and our industry has a habit of calibrating itself by adding or shedding businesses as needed. The inflation-adjusted sales per employee is actually remarkably steady, which indicates this. The average size of a commercial printing business has been on a very slow decline for decades. It was around 26 employees in the late 1980s and was just above 19 by 2006. That says more about desktop publishing replacing prepress than it says about anything else.
Source: http://members.whattheythink.com/home/drjoe269.cfm  Read more... (460 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Here was a post that showed up on my “preflight” watch-list this weekend, which I found interesting:

It also would be nice if it was possible to preflight InDesign documents if there were any untagged RGB images used. My intension is to create an InDesign script to preform a preflight.

Source: http://graphicstart.com/item.php?&itemid=1060906

It is important to note that FlightCheck Professional would be the *perfect* candidate for this task, as it can preflight both the PDF as well as the InDesign Adobe file and many other file types besides Adobe InDesign files. FCPro can also specifically let you know if the Adobe PDF has RGB images which do not have ICC Profiles attached and ignore the CMYK images.