Gary George from tunicca.com wrote this article about preflighting, postflighting and Automation. We invite your comments on whether you need preflighting for such formats as HTML, Flash, Video and 3D…

So there we are early in the morning driving down to the EuroTunnel to attend a partner technical meeting for ADAM software discussing the the process of pre-flight and where it fits into the whole business process flow of our production plants.

Lets first look at the term pre-flight: wikipedia describes it as:

The term used in the printing industry to describe the process of confirming that the digital files required for the printing process are all present, valid, correctly formatted, and of the desired type. The term originates from the pre-flight checklists used by pilots. The term was first used in a presentation at the Color Connections conference in 1990 by consultant Chuck Weger.

By definition it would say that the pre in pre-flight is that process of checking before any actions are performed, i.e. before you create the PDF/postscript and not after you have taken the action….. surely that would be post-flight?  Read more... (559 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

The VIGC has launched a set of 13 new “Live Preflight” profiles for they layout program, Adobe InDesign CS4. Here we read in part what they said:

“You have to deal with problems at the source. Trying to fix them after, which is the traditional process, does not only lead to loss of quality, but also loss of precious time. There are tools on the market to preflight native files from design applications, but these are tools that need to be bought separately. Consequently, they are not used on a broad scale. That is why it is so important that Adobe now has integrated this tool into its design application, InDesign CS4. Today, designers have no reasons not to check their files upfront unless it is to assemble the right profiles. VIGC is filling this important gap in the market with the launch of its 13 VIGC Live Preflight Profiles.” Essential parameters during design and layout phase with the Live Preflight in Adobe InDesign CS4 (an Adobe design cs upgrade from CS3), you can check around thirty important parameters. Some of them are obvious, like the number of spot colors used and the resolution of images. “But some are very technical”, says Didier Haazen, senior consultant and PDF Expert at VIGC. “However, they are at least recommended, some others are even essential. Take the ‘transparency blending space’ for example. It is something that many people have never heard of. But if this is set the wrong way, RGB instead of CMYK, when you want to go to print, you will get all kinds of unwanted, strange effects where the transparency is being flattened during PDF file creation.
Source: http://www.printingquestions.com/  Read more... (286 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)