This was a very nice image that our Swiss distributor, Kursiv, designed for their FlightCheck Professional v6.5 Swiss German mailing. Check it out; and for those from Switzerland, you may want to see the text below, for there are some great offers on stand-alone preflighting for multiple desktop publishing file formats via FlightCheck:

Preflighting für (fast) alles

Sicherheit in der Produktion – das erreichen Sie durch standardisierte Arbeitsabläufe. Eingehende oder ausgehende Dokumente können auf Fehler untersucht werden. FlightCheck Pro prüft alle wichtigen Dokumentformate aus der Druckvorstufe – sogar ohne dass Sie über die Originalprogramme verfügen müssen.

FlightCheck Pro 6.5
FlightCheck Professional 6.5 ist die neueste Version von Markzware’s Preflighting Tool, welches sowohl offene Dokumentformate (XPress 3–8, InDesign bis CS4, Word, Illustrator, usw.) als auch Ausgabeformate wie EPS, PDF und PDF-X prüft.

FlightCheck Professional läuft als eigenständiges Programm, und Dokumente werden durch einfaches Drag-and-Drop auf das Programm-Icon geprüft. Dafür müssen die Originalprogramme nicht installiert sein. Flightcheck Pro generiert sofort einen vollständigen Report gemäss Ihren Einstellungen. Perfekt für Ihre AVOR.
FlightCheck Pro unterstützt auch eine Batchverarbeitung mehrerer Dateien, und lässt sich durch Presets einfach für verschiedene Aufgaben konfigurieren.  Read more... (270 words, 1 image, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

This is a classic (Was all over Twitter last week and in times past), and oh so true, “8 or more ways to drive a graphic designer mad.” Basically, many preflight issues that the newly released FlightCheck Pro v6.5 could help solve… You have to love their first example;
“When you have to send a graphic designer a document, make sure it’s made with a program from Microsoft Office. PC version if possible. If you have to send pictures, you’ll have more success in driving them mad if, instead of just sending a jpeg or a raw camera file, you embed the pictures inside a Microsoft Office document like Word or Powerpoint. Don’t forget to lower the resolution to 72 dpi so that they’ll have to contact you again for a higher quality version. When you send them the ‘higher’ version, make sure the size is at least 50% smaller. And if you’re using email to send the pictures, forget the attachment once in a while.”

Source: http://ghislainroy.com/blog/2007/03/06/8-ways-to-drive-a-graphic-designer-mad  Read more... (241 words, 1 image, estimated 58 secs reading time)

FTP, although as reported here, is almost as old as me, is still the preferred and main method of file transfer to the printer:

This was all in a very interesting and detailed production survey for publishers by FOLIO over at FolioMag.com, where we read:

FOLIO:’s 2009 Manufacturing and Production Trends Survey reports what tools—like ad portals, virtual proofing and XML workflows—continue to come into their own and save publishers valuable dollars, as well as those areas that manufacturing and production execs are avoiding. Facing so many challenges this year, it appears that decision makers are remaining status quo and investing only in upgrades that will save big in the long run.
Source: http://www.foliomag.com/2009/folio-s-2009-manufacturing-and-production-trends-survey

Let’s just check out a couple of the color graphics they had, but, much more when you click through and read the entire article…

So prepress is continuing it’s migrating in-house by publishers. No surprise there, as it helps streamline the preflight process (note: FlightCheck Pro v6.5 is shipping with Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, PDF CS4 support and Quark 8 checking – preflight and package with FlightCheck!) – And we see that XML and the conversion to a more readily readable file format is also on the move:  Read more... (202 words, 3 images, estimated 48 secs reading time)