Read over on PrintWeek an interesting development in the area of “preflighting,” which will be shown in May at IPEX 2010 in the UK. Interesting, for we have been saying for years just demanding a PDF file in a certain flavor does not work:

Enfocus unveils PitStop Connect pre-flighting tool

Barney Cox, printweek.com, 09 March 2010
Enfocus has launched PitStop Connect – a software tool that printers can supply to clients to ensure files are produced to their specification so that there are “no more headaches” for creatives.
Source: http://www.printweek.com/PreMediaWeekly

The reason it is even more interesting, is for the fact that preflighting does not start with checking a PDF!  No, it starts with checking native artwork and Quark, InDesign or Illustrator layouts. That is what FlightCheck Professional and it’s exportable Ground Controls or preflight profiles offer. The ability to share what to check for, BEFORE a PDF is created. The fact that just jamming a PDF spec down the throats of the designers has not worked, as you’ll read in the article, also does not surprise me, for we have been seeing and saying that all along! We read in part:  Read more... (500 words, 4 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

There are not many things in life you can swear by, but it is good to hear that for many that includes the patented and advanced preflighting solution Markzware offers, FlightCheck Professional.

Yes, many will have their high-end, expensive workflows and RIP software with some form of limited preflighting built-in, but the real-thing, always adds just that right touch, as we can read:

“I like it because it quickly identifies RBG colour space, trapping and over-printing issues and even problems that might have occurred with ink density. I work on a high-end system with inbuilt file-checking facilities, but I still think it is important to have a system like FlightCheck Pro to catch any problems early on.”

Martin Harding, pre-press Mac operator, Prometheus Press
Source: http://www.printweek.com/RSS/News/895744/I-swear-Markzware-FlightCheck-Pro/

What do q2ind, acrobat reader, adobe indesign troubleshoot, preflight pdf, adobe reader 8 and cs4 indesign file fix have in common?

These are all words or terms that people are searching for and reaching the Markzware blog via. Of course q2ind is what we call Q2ID or our Quark to InDesign conversion plugin and the InDesign bad file phrases generally is a no-cure-no-pay service we offer to fix bad Adobe files (And corrupt QuarkXPress projects as well.). Preflight PDF is quite clear and something very important, even though that is more the postflight stage in the print-production workflow. Naturally we hope as graphic media people, that preflighting or quality assurance is happening throughout your publishing workflow.

On that note, a little humor via this video-
Funny pre-flight announcement:

Maybe we can get some comments from people that use FlightAlert XT from CompuSense. We read about it via a press release from XChange:

FlightAlert XT combines on-the-fly error checking of QuarkXPress documents with one of the most powerful Collect For Output engines available.

FlightAlert scans QuarkXPress documents for the key problems that regularly waste time, money and film. It is unique among the error-checking products in that there is no need to invoke or apply FlightAlert. It operates in the background as users work making it an ideal solution for integration into busy production and prepress workflows.

FlightAlert can be set to scan on Open, Close, Save, Save As, Save Page as EPS and Collect for Output. By concentrating on the core of common problems, each FlightAlert scan is virtually instantaneous on small documents and takes a negligible amount of time even on large documents.
Source: http://members.whattheythink.com/news/newslink.cfm?id=37503

Who has used both FlightCheck (the original and patented) and FlightAlert. What features do you think are better in one than the other? How is the price value better or worse?

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)

Gary George from tunicca.com wrote this article about preflighting, postflighting and Automation. We invite your comments on whether you need preflighting for such formats as HTML, Flash, Video and 3D…

So there we are early in the morning driving down to the EuroTunnel to attend a partner technical meeting for ADAM software discussing the the process of pre-flight and where it fits into the whole business process flow of our production plants.

Lets first look at the term pre-flight: wikipedia describes it as:

The term used in the printing industry to describe the process of confirming that the digital files required for the printing process are all present, valid, correctly formatted, and of the desired type. The term originates from the pre-flight checklists used by pilots. The term was first used in a presentation at the Color Connections conference in 1990 by consultant Chuck Weger.

By definition it would say that the pre in pre-flight is that process of checking before any actions are performed, i.e. before you create the PDF/postscript and not after you have taken the action….. surely that would be post-flight?  Read more... (559 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

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)

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)

Nice title this AcrobatUsers.com blog post had, “Prepare, preflight and print” and useful information for printing Acrobat PDF files:

Here are some tips to keep in mind, should you venture into automating your preflight workflow using your own Preflight profiles:  Read more... (312 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

• Study your usual workflow for good ways to lighten the load using custom profiles. It takes a few minutes to set one up, but then only a mouse click to run it in the future.
• Write a list of what you’d like to check, and the fixes you’ll need to include.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Rather than starting from scratch, start from an existing profile to which you can add and remove items. For a less-involved process, start with an existing check or fix to which you can add additional tasks.
• Give your profile a meaningful name. 2009_Johnston_newsletters makes a lot more sense than 20090401.J.N or something similar.
• Look for a few generic items you might not think of, but that can enhance your documents. For example, you could include Discard document structure or Optimize PDF for fast web view from the Document category in the Fixes. Neither of these examples is necessary for the most part, but both can help optimize your document for quicker distribution.

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.