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)

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/

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?

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)

“I see more and more people using lo res images more then ever and they don’t care about the results once the job prints” says “Prepress_Online” via their Twitter account to “Markzware.”

Is a low-resolution image pandemic sweeping the world of printing?

• Are creatives, graphic designers and print-buyers preflighting less than ever?
• Is quality assurance taking a back-seat to price?
• Do you use an electronic method of preflighting on your brochures, color graphics and other posters & cards heading to print?

Would love to see, via the comments section below, some answers to these general preflight and prepress problems. Hearing from both designers, publishers and printers would also be great.

You can follow Markzware’s and Prepress Online’s tweets here:
http://twitter.com/Markzware
http://twitter.com/Prepress_Online/

Adobe InDesign files and preflighting; an AdobeTV video by Rufus Deuchler:

“In this sixth episode of CSInsider|Design, I show the new Live Preflight feature in Adobe InDesign CS4. The term Preflight originates from the pre-flight checklists used by pilots prior to take off. In a publishing workflow, preflight is the process of checking a document for integrity and completeness, before it can move on in the workflow.” Source: http://graphicstart.com/item.php?f&itemid=1071437

He references a Wikipedia article which mentions this about preflight (postflight):

Pre-flighting is a 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.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-flight

Speaking of Chuck, watch what he has to say about this moment when he coined the term preflighting, to relate it to the quality control process in prepress and publishing at a show called Color Connections (late 80’s/early 90’s). Filmed in 2008 at the GraphExpo show :

 Read more... (194 words, estimated 47 secs reading time)

One of the leading suppliers of PDF technologies for print production and document management and archiving, Callas Software, has just announced a new version of it’s pdfToolbox software, version 4. Here is an excerpt from their press release;

“Powerful new features in pdfToolbox 4 include added functionality for imposing everything from business cards and booklets to N-up imposition; improved controls for creating great-looking PDF presentations; and easy creation of PDF versions for localized information or multiple-languages even when you don’t have the creator document or application.

callas pdfToolbox 4 also builds upon its predecessor’s enviable reputation for professional high-end production tools with advanced color controls and an updated version of the same preflight engine used in Adobe® Acrobat® that now supports the latest ISO standards for PDF/A and PDF/E and the recently released PDF/X-4, PDF/X-4p and PDF/X-5.”
Source: http://graphicstart.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=135

They have good PDF editing technology and although some would argue that checking the PDF could be better called a “postflight” it is yet another product offering the quality control process loosely called preflight.

[ratings]

Zevrix has today announced that they have updated their professional quality control tool for graphical source files. This is a neat, affordable software for checking image files which is further noted in the press release as;

“…Graphic Inspector provides a professional quality control solution for users of any trade, whether it’s print, prepress, web design, electronic publishing or digital photography. With Graphic Inspector, users automatically get crucial information on multiple raster and vector files, saving hours of manual checking and eliminating costly mistakes. Graphic Inspector will display the file kind, color mode, resolution, compression, color profile, spot colors, fonts, metadata and other attributes.”
SOURCE: http://graphicstart.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=126

FlightCheck from Markzware can also be set to batch control numerous color graphics image files (as well as of course the layout document such as QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign), as is exhibited in this movie on YouTube:

Preflight Checking a batch of Images with FlightCheck

I know, it sounds like the title of a movie- but it is not. The Ghent PDF Workgroup, who has developed many valuable specifications to make PDF delivery for print more predictable, announces the first Universal Proof of Preflight.

When implemented in a software solution, this best practice specification offers users the ability to review a PDF file’s preflight audit trail, including a digital signature, at any time during the design to print workflow.

This capability provides users the assurance that they can safely accept a PDF file with a Proof of Preflight. This process verifies which GWG preflight Specification was used to preflight the file and also the outcome of the preflight check.
SOURCE: QuickPrinting.com via Graphicstart.com

It will be interesting to see how this progresses as it sounds like a good idea.

Adobe Plugin developer Zevrix has updated its InPreflight solution for InDesign.

Zevriz has updated InPreflight, a quality control solution for Adobe InDesign that lets
users locate potential problems and produce error-free documents, to version 2.2.5.

SOURCE: MacsimumNews.com via Graphicstart.com.

Yet another piece of evidence of why not to be tricked into feeling safe using the pre-flight feature within InDesign itself, as this video highlights titled, Adobe InDesign preflight vs Markzwares FlightCheck.