I love analogies and here is one that was a perfect fit for FlightCheck Professional or preflighting in the generic:

RT @OphieLuStudios @aj_mitchell: Oops…New highway ramp too steep. To be torn down and rebuilt at Design firm’s expense. http://bit.ly/8kstZd

Construction or laying out roads is no different than designing a new newspaper or yearbook layout in Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress or Microsoft Publisher. Yes, perhaps the costs and processes are different, but I would guess the percentage in terms of money is similar. Re-working costs time and money. First preflight than PDF. The original article says:

“The brand-new never-opened Fairfax Road offramp of westbound Highway 178 must be demolished and rebuilt because of a design flaw, the Bakersfield public works department confirmed Monday.”
Source: http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/New-Hwy-178-ramp-is-huge-safety-issue-1-million/

“Design flaw.” Graphic designers have had it pretty good with printers really. Did you notice in the article that the “design firm” had to pay the nearly 1 million dollar fee to re-do it all? A good prepress department is worth it’s weight in gold really. (And gold is expensive these days!)

What is your favorite preflight analogy?  Read more... (209 words, 2 images, estimated 50 secs reading time)

Here we see an Enfocus Switch 08 video, with six customer case-studies on why they choose this print workflow automation tool:

Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional is a key part of Switch flows (PowerSwitch, LightSwitch, etc). Watch here how you can automated preflight with Switch and FlightCheck in the same flow or production workflow. You can find many flows on the Crossroads page, which helps with integration:

In this MarkzwareTV video tutorial, we will not only learn how to preflight with Markzware’s FlightCheck, however also how to automate things. Using EskoArtwork’s SWITCH, FlightCheck Professional can be turned into an even more powerful workhorse.

Naturally, everyone needs a copy of FlightCheck on their desktop, as it helps you not only find print problems, but navigate right into the problem within the source application. This being said, there is also a need for preflight checks as part of other automations or workflows and SWITCH provides an easy way to set-up and use FlightCheck within such flows.

Here is part 2:

Preflight or postflight, PitStop or FlightCheck? You should (and hopefully you are) doing both preflight and postflight! Here was a new thread over on PrintPlanet that my colleague Mark (and Charles) alerted us to:

Pitstop or Flightcheck?
We are a small print shop working with Macs, QuarkXPress & CS4 applications. We get some native files along with PDFs from customers for jobs, but mostly we get PDFs. Can you tell me the pros and cons to each of these software packages as a preflighting tool?
Source: http://printplanet.com/forums/prepress-workflow-discussion/18449-pitstop-flightcheck

Check out the full thread above, as there are some good replies. Watch FlightCheck Professional in action in this video demonstration, almost as good as a demo download FlightCheck itself!

It is nearly impossible to make a truly standard, yet open (i.e., allowing many and any customers in) design-to-print workflow; but their are standard tools, tips and tactics to make things flow properly. Here was a great post on the PrintPlanet forum asking for preflight, prepress and general workflow help. It reads:

Basic Workflow Standardization
“I am a print shop manager in an in-plant. One of my biggest problems is fonts. Most of the documents I get are from Word or uneducated Publisher users. Some other problems are users creating a two-color jobs in CMYK and black text not being pure black. Currently we handle everything we get on an individual basis, but it is getting completely out of hand. I need to start putting in place some systems to handle some of these problems

Is there a easy way to convert documents to pdf with the correct specifications before I get them? For example is there a pdf print driver that I can put on my web site or push out to everyone on my network that it will create a pdf to my specifications so I do not have to worry about fonts or poor resolution? If so how much does something like that cost?  Read more... (373 words, estimated 1:30 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

Live Preflight from InDesign, PitStop or FlightCheck?

Markzware April 2009 News

Contents:

• * MarkzTools 8 – now shipping!
• * PUB2ID v4 (MSPublisher to InDesign) conversion tool ships!
• * New Q2ID (Quark to InDesign) and ID2Q (InDesign to Quark) videos!
• * “In flight, preflight, and post flight” by Print & Paper Monthly
• * Cannot Open InDesign- always crashing: What can I do?
• * Markzware Support Videos
• * S P E C I A L  – QuarkXPress 8 – Upgrade from any version AND get ID2Q FREE!

Spring is in the air and with that warm thought we bring you this fresh Markzware newsletter for April 2009! If you would like to order or have questions, comments or feedback, please reply to this email or contact us today.

Friendly Regards,
David Dilling
Markzware b.v. Europe
http://www.markzware.com

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

MarkzTools 8 XT now shipping!
Fix corrupted or damaged QuarkXPress 8 (or lower) projects.
Markzware releases the latest version of MarkzTools, version 8. This XTension will work within QuarkXPress 8 or 7 and amongst other features, can attempt to repair or salvage your crashing or damaged QuarkXPress files. See:
http://markzware.com/markztools  Read more... (573 words, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

Of course you can handle your inflight (Similar, but different than a full preflight.) needs with Adobe’s Live preflight. We recently read in this excellent article, that there is good reason to use more preflight tools in the same workflow, due to the varying creative and production stages, such as FlightCheck Professional, PitStop Professional and perhaps also InPreflight from Zevrix, which has this new lighter version out as well:

The new InPreflight Studio is a low cost version which targets artists and designers who don’t require the advanced packaging capabilities. It provides the same powerful preflight and reporting solutions as the Pro version. InPreflight Pro is identical to the current version of InPreflight which includes automated packaging of multiple documents and other advanced options.
Source: http://prmac.com/release-id-4999.htm

Quality is what you make of it.

Excellent article came out this month in Print & Paper Monthly about why Markzware’s FlightCheck Professionall and Adobe’s Live Preflighting within Adobe InDesign, should be used all in the same workflow. It is titled, “In flight, preflight, and post flight” and here is available to be read as an online edition as well.

“The question is: why use Adobe’s Live Preflight, Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional and Enfocus’ PitStop together? The answer is simple: for complete quality control.” Source: Print & Paper Monthly (U.K. – March 2009, page 17-18)

The article goes into great detail about where and how to preflight and how to get the most out of your workflow. It is a recommended read for any print-shop or even for publishers and designers, as preflighting crosses borders.

Over at the Markzware’s Group on Linkedin.com, the popular professional social networking site, we posted an interesting topic and question- please join in!

How do you use preflighting in your workflow?

Here is a video interview of a graphic designer and for a large part he goes over how he preflights and the tools he uses (FlightCheck, PitStop, etc):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDcH8HXZhS4

How do you preflight in your workflow and why?

You can answer in the comments below, but please also join our Linkedin network and answer there as well…
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=70725&trk=hb_side_g

There is an interesting article titled, “When do you need to preflight; the ROI discussion” which has some excellent points about preflx3h xvn/=\][pwqighting. For instance, they say;

“The need for preflighting depends on the workflow and the job type. Magazine publishers will want to preflight early in the publishing process because they have no idea where the layout files they receive (adverts, classifieds, etc., for example) come from, and what the skill level of the layout designer of the file was.

For them and for newspaper publishers, preflighting must be done well before the file is converted to PDF. That indeed saves them huge amounts of money trying to correct the file downstream. Here, applications like Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional are essential.”
SOURCE: http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/1430/

Here, they hit it right on the spot. Yet, then comes the part where I must disagree with- at least in part. With regards to book publishers, they give this example of why early preflighting may not be needed, in their eyes (And in the authors defense, this is a common misconception);  Read more... (582 words, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)