When an InDesign.INDD file is really a Quark .QXP layout…….

Hi, David Dilling here from Markzware and here is yet another interesting one. A customer sent in a email with the dreaded “I have a bad InDesign file please help me!” This one was a little bit different in that he knew it was an old file and that there were defiantly issues with it and he couldn’t quiet figure it out. The subject of this movie is “When InDesign isn’t InDesign but QuarkXPress.” Yes follow me on this one. Come check it out on my screen here because it is quiet a common problem, in any event I’m hearing more and more about this and the type and creator being zapped in the file and other issues like this. It’s very important, the file extension use and how you use it on a Macintosh or even a Windows machine of course as well.

It is not as easy as just adding .INDD to a QuarkXPress file and woof magically it become a InDesign file. Visa versa you just can’t take a Jpeg add a .tiff and it becomes a tiff file, it just does not work that way. If it did life would be a lot simpler but that is just not so. Now come check it out on my screen and thank you for watching.

Braven Greenelsh, president of La Visual shares his thoughts on the Adobe CS4 conference in Los Angeles.

Question and Answer: FlightCheck Professional and Adobe’s Live Preflight

Here we see an interesting question from a potential buyer in the U.K.:

Hi David,

Yes, it was an interesting demo. However, one question that I have is regarding InDesign CS4.

I have read some of your comments regarding Indesign’s preflighting features compared to Flightcheck, which I totally agree with, but do these comments still stand when comparing against Indesign’s “live preflight” offering – I guess they do but would value your opinion.

Kind Regards,
Ian.

The answer to this very good question was as follows:

Hello Ian,

Excellent question. InDesign CS4’s new “Live Preflight” feature does appear to have some interesting functionality which could be useful. For instance text overflow- and being brought right to the issue to fix it. However we also had our FlightCheck Studio (XT and Plugin offering live preflight) which failed- designers use the other side of the brain when designing and do not want to be bothered, while in the midst of the design. Thus, FlightCheck is like your tennis coach, whom you sit down with after designing and it warns you of hundreds of things- 200 more than InDesign’s Live preflight approximately.  Read more... (540 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

There is a new article online over at it-enquirer.com, which goes into some interesting details about why, how and which preflight tool should or could be used within your workflow and where. In part, it says,

“Markzware has been developing FlightCheck for years, in several formats –including a highly efficient and successful online service– to accommodate for printed output, checking for trapping errors and compliance with standards such as PDF/X, for example. FlightCheck can be deployed early in the publishing process, which theoretically saves money as errors are discovered earlier and can be corrected before they cause trouble at the printing press.”
SOURCE: http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/preflighting/

You can read the entire article here. It is simple; like any process, the earlier you can catch a problem and correct it, the less costly it will be…

More and more printers and publishers are reverting from demanding print-ready PDF jobs only. PDF and the various standards out there like PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF and the great work by the GWG (Ghent PDF Workgroup) are excellent initiatives, but not the cure-all. The reasons for this have to do with preflighting and last minute file corrections. Editing a PDF is not a trivial task. Yes, a prepress expert well trained with tools like Enfocus PitStop or Callas PDFToolbox can get away with some, but not all changes. (We will cover this in a future blog post.)

Here is an interesting FlightCheck user interview with Mr. Paul de Boer which goes into further detail on this exact topic. Paul is a freelance graphic designer from The Netherlands whom specializes in laying-out books for artists and historical societies amongst other more standard design products.

De Boer on why he bought FlightCheck on a sunny Friday afternoon; “I want this weekend to have the time to correct them [the 100 page book] properly. Now InDesign, the program (Adobe) InDesign you can have a sort of ‘FlightCheck’ as well, but I am searching for perfection and FlightCheck from Markzware is giving more detail.”
Paul de Boer, freelance book designer – http://www.pauldeboer.eu  Read more... (662 words, estimated 2:39 mins reading time)

This Drupa may prove nothing else than the show where they all just got along. Take this example, which includes some form of preflighting (Let’s call that postflighting maybe.); Xerox’s FreeFlow workflow collection of approved vendor solutions and products which now includes FUJIFILM Workflow XMF and Heidelberg Prinect as possible connections to the extended Xerox flow.

The FUJIFILM Workflow XMF has some interesting possibilities, as this article on WhatTheyThink.com highlighted;

“XMF provides pre-flighting, native file conversion to PDF, color management, single-click imposition, and job management capabilities. It also enables electronic proofing with a three-dimensional view of the job, permitting the proofer to flip through virtual pages to check flow and alignment as well as color.”
SOURCE: WhatTheyThink.com

It is good to see major, competing vendors working together to help provide a link between all of these various tools in use at any given shop. This spirit of cooperation is exactly what JDF needs to finally succeed… maybe. In any event it is announcements like these that give promise to truly automated workflows. Now, how to we ensure that everything that is fed into these workflows is print-ready? FlightCheck.

Preflight, in the graphic arts sense, is the process of checking a digital document before it goes to plate, print or otherwise output (exported – such as to PDF). It traditionally is a way to check quality before going to the printing press, digital or otherwise, but can also be used to check online banners and gifs. Preflight is best done on the source document, such as those created in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress or Corel!Draw as some examples, before becoming a PDF (Portable Document Format). Similar to a pilot whom walks around and performs a pre take-off pre-flight check, preflighting for designers and prepress operators should be a must.

The term preflight was first used during a presentation in 1990 by Chuck Weger, a well know industry consultant. There were some early on postscript (rips) that interperted data and provided a preflight report of sorts. However the first true preflight application came from Markzware and was wisely called FlightCheck another term pilots also use.

Even before FlightCheck® was out on the market, Markzware applied for and was dully granted a U.S. Patent Number 5,963,641 – ‘Device and method for examining, verifying, correcting and approving electronic documents prior to printing, transmission or recording.’  Read more... (508 words, 1 image, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

MARKZWARE ANNOUNCES THE UPDATE OF FLIGHTCHECK V6.11

SANTA ANA, California — April 22, 2008 — Markzware, the inventor of preflighting and data-conversion software leader, today announced the release and immediate availability of the FlightCheck upgrade v6.11. FlightCheck is Markzware flagship prepress application that manages quality control of digital files destined for print or electronic distribution.

This FlightCheck v6.11 update is a maintenance release that fixes reported issues and improves several features and other refinements to this award winning preflighting solution. Detailed information on all of the changes and improvements implemented in FlightCheck v6.11 can be found at:

http://www.markzware.com/downloads/documentation/FlightCheck6_Release_Notes.pdf

“We have been committed to providing, fast reliable and accurate upgrades of our preflighting solution, FlightCheck, “Mary Gay Marchese, public relations director of Markzware said. “We are dedicated to serving our customers by meeting their needs while continuing to provide world-class preflighting support.”

The FlightCheck v6.11 update is available free of charge to all registered FlightCheck 6.x users. The MSRP for FlightCheck Professional is $499. For more information, or purchase, visit: http://www.markzware.com/store.

Markzware FlightCheck Professional is a prepress application that is used to manage quality control for print jobs. This solution provides both native file and PDF preflight checking and is covered by a U.S. Patent.  Read more... (272 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Hello, my name is David Dilling from Markzware, thanks for joining us today. We are going to go over FlightCheck Professional, Markzware advanced preflight tool in comparison to Adobe built-in preflight within InDesign CS3 and CS2 I believe.

Over the years, we have seen more and more seemingly thinking that they are getting full-fledged preflight if they use Adobe InDesign built-in preflight tool within InDesign. Well, I am here to tell you that simply is not true.

Furthermore even calling it a preflight function is actually stretching the truth. It is not rules based, meaning you cannot even change what you want to check for, you have no say in that whatsoever in the built-in feature within InDesign it just gives you the information it gives you. Yes, it has nice info for colors, fonts and images even though it is pretty limited at that so it has a certain use for sure, however it is far from a professional preflight tool, such as FlightCheck.  Read more... (1380 words, estimated 5:31 mins reading time)