With president Obama just leaving China, this post may be seen as timely; Adopt a printer in China or other far-east markets. That is my idea for the day. Just as many small towns and cities will have sister, partner cities in other parts of the world, so should print-shops. Why?

Print is not dead. Neither is outsourcing.

We read here on this reply to a Chinese print representative looking for work with American printers:

“Many companies are taking their large print orders to Chinese printing companies in the hopes of saving money. I know of three sales reps in my area alone that are representing chinese printing companies.Their pricing is half to one third of mine on larger projects. They have a high degree of success bringing work to their Chinese employers.

But as always with a lower price, comes a cost…” (Read full source post for full details)
Source: PrintPlanet on Linkedin.com

And that cost can be partly be overcome by setting up real, perhaps even legal, partnerships. If you just shop for the cheapest print, you’ll be switching every job or monthly. Why not form a true partnership?  Read more... (567 words, 2 images, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)

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!

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)

“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

We saw a post over at PrintPlanet titled, “What are the most common problems you see with customer files?” which highlights an interesting industry survey. The part that caught our preflighting eye was:

“Lorraine Donegan at Cal Poly’s Graphic Communication Dept, is speaking to two separate groups of graphic designers. She is seeking feedback from prepress depts to address current pitfalls (missing fonts, etc) and will use this information in her presentations. If you have a few minutes to fill out her survey, I’m sure it would really help her out.”
SOURCE: http://printplanet.com/forums/prepress-workflow-discussion/

Lorraine’s survey on prepress and graphic design pitfalls is here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=oW30_2biY0bBG2lG600KT1vA_3d_3d

Please take a moment and fill it out! Thank you.

There is a great thread running over on PrintPlanet.com titled, “FlightCheck Pro vs. Pit Stop?” where the initial poster asks, “which one is best? And why?” The responses were interesting and for the most part accurate, such as;

“Can you preflight Quark, illustrator, eps, indesign or photoshop files in Pitstop?

That’s why my vote go to Flightcheck.”
Posted, ‘Ryan’ (implying that FlightCheck can preflight numerous file formats)

‘HappyFriday’ posted;
“We run FlightCheck Professional on our native files and PDFs. When I have time, I often preflight PDFs in both FlightCheck and Acrobat.

If we work with more PDFs, I would requested for Pitstop though.”
SOURCE: http://printplanet.com/discuss/thread.jspa?messageID=16327

It general, FlightCheck Professional is for native or open files such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and PitStop Professional from Enfocus an EskoArtwork company for PDF jobs. Preflight and Postflight. FlightCheck can however check PDF print-jobs as well- yet does not correct them like PitStop (which can be dangerous anyway, but often a necessary evil and needed tool as well.) Join the discussion on the above link!
Related Post: What to send to the printer; PDF, Native Job or both?