70% of PDFs and files for print have Job-Stopping errors Costing millions in reproduction.

“Quality is everyone’s responsibility”

W. Edwards Deming

Would an airplane pilot ever take-off without performing a preflight check? The answer is “no.” Then why would you drop your PDFs into your publishing workflow without performing a thorough preflight? Thousands of Markzware customers rely on FlightCheck every day to check their PDF or source print-files, such as Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop or QuarkXPress before they output (print or create PDF)/send off. Whether it is an open file type or a PDF, FlightCheck Professional will not only check for the Top Ten preflight problems but will scan your documents for literally hundreds of potential and costly output problems, even solving the issues for you. Best of all, encourage the use of FlightCheck throughout your extended workflow, as a PDF is only as good as the native or source files it is created from!

Whether it is hairlines or RGB colors, image compression or ink density of your PDF, FlightCheck will let you know. Stop the “Top-Ten Preflight Problems” today and start saving more!

Enfocus PitStop or Markzware FlightCheck?
Not sure. See: PitStop or FlightCheck…  Read more... (272 words, 1 image, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Markzware launched, at PRINT 09 in September, a new content search engine technology called PageZephyr. This beta Macintosh application will index desktop publishing file formats such as Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress and soon other document types, like PDF, Microsoft Publisher and even “the rage” of it’s day, PageMaker. Here we see some of the excitement generated from the show-floor and one simple exclusive press release, which Mary Gay (Public Relations) pushed up court… and re-tweets via Twitter! Watch Patrick Marchese, co-founder and CEO of Markzware, demonstrate PageZephyr…

It is amazing how fast information can travel in this day and age; which is one of the said purposes of PageZepyr; to bridge the printed world with the Internet or online world.

TRANSCRIPT:

All right, so “Content Search Engine“, so Mary Gay, tell us…. Hey everybody, were here at Print 09 in Chicago. It has been a pretty interesting show here, because we have announced a new product that, which is completely different from our “normal joe” that we’ve been showing here at the shows with preflighting. Were going into a whole new direction, which is ‘exciting’! Because were looking into the future with, well, here it is- Content Search Engine.  Read more... (925 words, estimated 3:42 mins reading time)

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)

Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group talks to us at PRINT 09 in this video on how he uses FlightCheck Professional AND Adobe Acrobat to preflight his incoming files for their print workflow. He uses both; but prefers FlightCheck (for everything first) due to it’s ease-of-use and support of more than 50 file formats such as InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, PDF and others. Much more effective to preflight before outputting to PDF:

In the last segment, you see Doug Rosen, Markzware project manager, going into some advanced details with Jon on font search paths for helping optimize your font preflighting in FlightCheck. FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is now shipping with CS4 and Quark8 support. See:
http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_…

The reason it was so great to hear Jon’s comments, is that some out there in the graphic arts industry, or what is it called now, “print media“, like to think that it is best to funnel this multi-step process called preflight to the very end of the workflow and even some are trying to automate preflight checking. It is however, largely a human process which requires a simple checklist to work best and should be done at every step in the graphics workflow where the layout file switches hands or is due to be output (see preflight defined). As Dr. Demming said on quality assurance,

“Quality is everyone’s responsibility.”

Have you ever heard of PDF/X-5g (see below), an OPI similar prepress workflow involving PDF’s? Here was an interesting download from an Adobe Blog titled, “On the Evolution of PDF” by Jim King. It goes over PDF compatibility issues with Acrobat reader, Acrobat and what will be addressed in the next Adobe update or future Adobe updates. Here was the section that is most relevant us in electronic publishing, prepress and printing:

6.0  PDF Profiles (i.e., subsets)
Many proper profiles of PDF have become ISO standards. They allow support for various vertical markets more effectively than open-ended PDF might. These standards efforts also bring together a group of knowledgeable and experienced people in those vertical markets. Here is the current list of ISO standards that are subsets of PDF:
6.1  PDF/X (ISO 15930) – targeted for prepress workflows.
• ISO 15930-1:2001: PDF/X-1a:2001, Blind exchange in CMYK + Spot Colors, based
on PDF 1.3
• ISO 15930-3:2002: PDF/X-3:2002, Allows CMYK, Spot, Calibrated (managed) RGB,
CIELAB, with ICC Profile, based on PDF 1.3.
• ISO 15930-4:2003: PDF/X-1a:2003, revision of PDF/X-1a:2001 based on PDF 1.4
• ISO 15930-5: PDF/X-2, An extension of PDF/X-3 which allows for OPI-like (external
linked) data to be included
• ISO 15930-6:2003: PDF/X-3:2003, revision of PDF/X-3:2002 based on PDF 1.4
• ISO 15930-7:2008: PDF/X-4, Colour-managed, CMYK, gray, RGB or spot colour data
are supported, as are PDF transparency and optional content. A second conformance
level named PDF/X-4p may be used when the ICC Profile in the output intent is exter-
nally supplied.
• ISO 15930-8:2008 PDF/X-5,a collection of three conformance levels:  Read more... (514 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

Making a print-ready Acrobat 9 or similar PDF file can be tricky. Naturally, quality control or preflight should be a key part of any graphic design or publishing workflow. This said, here is a good initiative I came across while cruising the Graphicstart collection of RSS feeds:

Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Updates Require New GWG Guidelines for PDF Creation from Office Applications

To make it easier and faster to get quality results in PDFs created from Office applications, the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) has issued new best practice process guidelines. The new guidelines were developed in response to recent changes made to Office applications and the Adobe Acrobat family of products.

The new Office Printing PDF Creator Guidelines are available for free download at: http://gwg.org/Office_Document_Printing_-1.phtml

Says Menno Mooji, co-chairman of the GWG Office Document Printing Subcommittee and a founder of ISI Publishing Innovators, “With the software changes in Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 and Adobe Acrobat 9, new ways of creating predictable PDFs are now possible. As a result, we’ve released a document outlining best practices that cater to the new developments.
Source: http://www.quickprinting.com/web/online/Industry-News-and-Trends/Microsoft-Office-and-Adobe-Acrobat-Updates-Require-New-GWG-Guidelines-for-PDF-Creation-from-Office-Applications/1$10765  Read more... (217 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)

David Creamer has reviewed Markzware’s document conversion tool, Q2ID v4 in the current issue of “Layers Magazine.”

FROM QUARK TO INDESIGN IN A SNAP

The main focus of Q2ID v4 is to support InDesign CS4 and QuarkXPress 8 files. One important thing that’s changed in this version is the updated conversion notes PDF, which now lists most of the conversion issues you might encounter. Another change is that you can use either the InDesign Open menu or the new Markzware menu. Quark files with multiple layouts can be converted individually or all at once; multiple Quark files can be converted, too.

This version appears to fix most of the issues I noted in the last version, including keeping the proper based-on settings, better translations of Quark’s transparency effects into InDesign (with one major exception noted below), and better layer translation between programs.  Read more... (333 words, 1 image, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

Here is an excellent article on how designers and creators can better deal with their printing job providers called, “A Mistake Was Made–Kill the Printer!” Firstly, I learned of this via Linkedin.com from a post to the PrintPlant “Linkedin-group” via fellow member,  Bill Ruesch. (Who said social media was not useful?) I include the numbered points from this article on how to better work with your printer, which will hit home to many. One way to avoid problems is to preflight, using FlightCheck . Read on…

A Mistake Was Made–Kill the Printer!
The question of giving a supplier the boot comes up from time-to-time. Before doing something rash, like firing a previously reliable printer, you should ask yourself  some important questions:  Read more... (741 words, estimated 2:58 mins reading time)

Somewhere along the line this Monday morning an email came in about a new creation, conversion and exporting solution from Global Graphics called gDoc Fusion (Windows only). Here is what it is in short:

Launching May 18th
gDoc™ Fusion
The easiest way to quickly create, join, and edit PDF, XPS and Word documents for sharing, printing or collaboration.

Yet (See their Quick Convert module) another example on how important, useful and needed conversion tools can be to the document workflow (See Markzware’s document conversion tools here.). This affordable tool at only 99 Euros/USD also offers PDF editing and re-assembly:

Page View – edit PDF with the context-sensitive toolbar
Use the Page View to read and modify individual PDF pages. With smart, context-sensitive text selection, just click and drag to copy, highlight or edit text, even redact – just choose from the floating toolbar.
The Page View is also where you can also add or edit sticky notes and bookmarks to your PDF, or use text search and replace.  Read more... (308 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

“duke prepress” asks over on the PrintPlanet forum, “Does anyone still preflight jobs if so what programs are you using“? Here are some of the answers:

“mattbeals” chimed in saying, in part: “Yes, there is still a lot of preflighting going on. Two basic methods; native document preflight and PDF based preflighting. For native files the only really functional, and meaningful, preflight comes from FlightCheck…. There are others, but Markzware, Callas and Enfocus are the three real major players if you look at the installation base. Preflight is like an onion, it’s got layers…”

“P-Rex” (Love that user name!) added: “Acrobat has its own Preflight feature built in. Otherwise, PitStop or FlightCheck are good third-party software programs.“

To see all of the comments or to add your own, you can read the full post here:
http://printplanet.com/forums/prepress-workflow-discussion/17908-preflight