by Stephen Beals

I have been reading many written views by pundits about how print will survive because it’s something you can touch and feel: that it gives the reader a sense of interaction with the words and a feeling of control. All of which is true.

They also say printed products do things online products cannot. You can clip a coupon from a magazine: although you can also clip coupons online, you still have to print them out…for now.

I’m speaking of general commercial printing. Package printing, wide format and certain types of print, such as thermography, foil printing are products e-print can’t really replace.

Still, things are changing and they are changing rapidly. Kids are much more comfortable reading from a screen than most adults. Older folks (like me) still print out long documents because we want to hold them in our hands and underline things with a highlighter.

Electronic media delivery is developing rapidly, and if we think print will forever allow people to “do things you can’t do electronically,” think again. iPhone apps are a perfect example of using new media to do things that are intuitive, interactive and involve touch and feel: just like print only different – and in some ways better.  Read more... (693 words, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)

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)

With all the various media available to today’s content creator, communicating with large groups has become a complex proposition. You have to scream to get people’s attention — especially when preparing documents for printing.

The printed word is still the most reliable format for reaching potential audiences. Just a few years ago, its layout was created with paper strips of text that were pasted up on art boards, using either wax or rubber cement. This was know as ‘cold type.’

It took until the early 1990s for most organizations to come to rely on page layout software. The freedom computer programs now allow designs to be as varied as one’s imagination.

Once created, however, electronic document is subject to individual quirks inherent to its particular software application For instance, you cannot do four-color separation work using Microsoft Word.

The ability to create eye-catching flyers and newsletters has been greatly enhanced in recent years by page layout programs, such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. They have helped streamline the design and production process, which encompasses not only acquiring materials and designing the piece, but also checking the integrity of the digital file before final print.  Read more... (318 words, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)

This Drupa may prove nothing else than the show where they all just got along. Take this example, which includes some form of preflighting (Let’s call that postflighting maybe.); Xerox’s FreeFlow workflow collection of approved vendor solutions and products which now includes FUJIFILM Workflow XMF and Heidelberg Prinect as possible connections to the extended Xerox flow.

The FUJIFILM Workflow XMF has some interesting possibilities, as this article on WhatTheyThink.com highlighted;

“XMF provides pre-flighting, native file conversion to PDF, color management, single-click imposition, and job management capabilities. It also enables electronic proofing with a three-dimensional view of the job, permitting the proofer to flip through virtual pages to check flow and alignment as well as color.”
SOURCE: WhatTheyThink.com

It is good to see major, competing vendors working together to help provide a link between all of these various tools in use at any given shop. This spirit of cooperation is exactly what JDF needs to finally succeed… maybe. In any event it is announcements like these that give promise to truly automated workflows. Now, how to we ensure that everything that is fed into these workflows is print-ready? FlightCheck.