Printing tips on the prepress side of things for graphic designers. How to create color graphics and InDesign layouts, which will ultimately print perfectly, or output to PDF without problems.  First, here are the 10 most common preflight problems or things you should avoid:

This graphic is from about TEN YEARS AGO! Amazing how it all basically stays the same: Missing fonts, incorrect trapping (when two different colors overlap), incorrect color usage, images in the wrong color mode, improper page set-up settings, unlinked graphics or images, inadequate bleeds, no proof (soft or print), missing images, too low (or too high) image effective image resolution.

With this in mind, here was a great, colorful blog post titled, “10 Pre-Press Tips For Perfect Print Publishing” which I wanted to highlight. The 10 items from the post, which are of course from a strictly design perspective are:

1. Use RGB Color Mode For Photoshop Images
2. Specify The Right Color Settings
3. Ditch Photoshop EPS Files And Use PSD Files Instead
4. Accurately Simulate CMYK While Working In RGB
5. Selecting the Right CMYK Output Profile For The Job
6. Use InDesign Instead Of Photoshop To Make The Final Color Conversion
7. Download All The Profiles
8. Exporting A Perfect CMYK PDF Using RGB Images
9. Avoiding Errors When Using RGB Images And Spot Colors
10. Share Your PDF Files With Acrobat.com
Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/  Read more... (300 words, 1 image, estimated 1:12 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)

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)

Yet another interesting email popped-up within the In-Box, this time from Dewald Rosema of Exell Technologies, the Markzware distributor in South Africa. Here it is, with the kind approval of Dewald:

In today’s economic climate and growing competition, it is essential for creative, publishing and print production organizations, to ensure it stays ahead of the game and finds new innovative ways to reduce costs reduce human errors and produce high quality jobs quickly at competitive pricing.

Designing for Print?
Where does print start – designing? Who is responsible for printing what was designed – the printer? Who should carry the cost for correcting incorrect design work – the print buyer?

Most common design problems – time wasters – cost adding factors:  Read more... (438 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

• Missing or incorrect bleed
• Incorrect job size
• Missing fonts
• RGB images
• Missing graphics – Links
• Resolution to high or to low
• Trapping
• PMS color – Should it be a spot or standard process (CMYK)

With the advent of digital workflow, new responsibilities emerge for the newspaper publisher and the ad creator

Ask most newspaper sales executives, and they’ll tell you just how competitive the market place is these days — how tough of a sell it is when other media forms are drawing the interest of advertisers like never before.

Newspapers must be able to compete with these other vehicles, present compelling circulation numbers, and provide excellent customer service to the advertising client. They must be able to accept, position, produce and print the advertiser’s copy and images, with particular attention paid to reproduction quality.

In the cases of ads supplied by larger agencies and experienced design firms, digital content may come in by way of “prepress-ready” file formats, all the elements present and accounted for, all the specifications for print met. But not all ads come in from clients well-equipped to supply these types of files. As a result, plenty of bad files come in the door — files rife with font, resolution or color space problems. And these “bad files” must then be fixed before they can be placed in the imposition, which, of course, takes time and money.  Read more... (1320 words, estimated 5:17 mins reading time)