There is a great discussion going on in the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals over on Linkedin, started by Cindy (Bailey) Wingo, where in short she asked:

“What are the industry standards for producing clean, RIPpable files?” … “What is the industry standard for excellence in pre-flighting files?“

Source: Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

Great replies, but it is the last post, which I will start with; which is the summary as far as quality-minded design and publishing users are concerned with, in the overall workflow process to printed output:

“Preflighting should happen even before the PDF is even created. Bad files make bad PDFs. That’s why programs such as FlightCheck are so invaluable.“

Source: David Creamer via the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

This was in response to the usual postflighting options mentioned for later stage PDF’s and the likes. This is fine and true, as a step right before the RIP, but not the entire truth; actually far from it. You need to Preflight FIRST before even making a PDF print-file. What was encouraging was the facts brought forth by industry expert (I.D.E.A.S Training) and certified Adobe and Quark trainer, David Creamer and our own Mary Gay (Pettit) Marchese, for this is the way to make a publishing and print workflow truly flow.  Read more... (501 words, 2 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Let’s just get right to the educational feature film and then below some all important postflight, pardon the pun, commentary. Here is the nicely prepared tutorial titled, “Analyzing and Preflighting Adobe Acrobat PDF Files For Print“:

Great job by http://www.envisionprinting.com/ in highlighting these technical prepress issues and how to tackle finding them in Adobe Acrobat. OK, but did you notice that most of the items he was checking for, are best checked and corrected well before the PDF stage? The main issues were:

* Non embedded Fonts (missing fonts in native file)
* RGB images instead of CMYK
* Low Resolution Images

These common issues and more would have to be fixed by the graphic designer, back within their native files*. Yes, it is utterly important to check the Acrobat PDF you have created, however, by first preflighting and then creating a PDF, you will be ahead of the game. Not only that, but tools like FlightCheck Professional will not only check Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, etc, but also the resulting PDF through one VERY easy to use drag-and-drop interface. Furthermore, you can also package all fonts and images together for archiving or compressing and sending to someone else the full job; it will even preflight Adobe Acrobat, check a PDF and collect non-embedded fonts used but not placed within a PDF!  Read more... (239 words, estimated 57 secs reading time)

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)

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)

Server action on the preflight front for PDF’s from Callas, just recently released. As we can read here:

“Callas software has released pdfToolbox 4 and pdfToolbox Server 4, the latest version of its PDF preflighting and automated correction tools. The updates are fully compliant with the latest Ghent PDF Workgroup standards. The server version can be used for fully-automated PDF correction, page manipulation, presentation preparation or imposition.”

SOURCE: http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/12/03/pdftoolbox.server.4

Or is that Postflight? I guess it depends on which end of the workflow stick you are on…

Chuck Yeager, retired brigadier general from the United States Air Force, surely preflighted his aircraft (experimental X-1) before becoming the first person to pilot a plane that broke the sound barrier. Cruising to the speed of Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 feet Chuck performed this accomplishment on October 14, 1947. (source) Years later, just before the dawn of PDF, another Chuck was busy with preflight, albeit of a postscript kind. In this video interview we will hear from the man often said to have first coined this term, which is a vital part of our modern workflows today- Preflight.

At Graph Expo we spotted Mr. Chuck Weger from Elara Systems, Inc and immediately asked if we could do a little video interview with him. He was more than willing and full of energy. You can watch the video here: