70% of PDFs and files for print have Job-Stopping errors Costing millions in reproduction.

“Quality is everyone’s responsibility”

W. Edwards Deming

Would an airplane pilot ever take-off without performing a preflight check? The answer is “no.” Then why would you drop your PDFs into your publishing workflow without performing a thorough preflight? Thousands of Markzware customers rely on FlightCheck every day to check their PDF or source print-files, such as Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop or QuarkXPress before they output (print or create PDF)/send off. Whether it is an open file type or a PDF, FlightCheck Professional will not only check for the Top Ten preflight problems but will scan your documents for literally hundreds of potential and costly output problems, even solving the issues for you. Best of all, encourage the use of FlightCheck throughout your extended workflow, as a PDF is only as good as the native or source files it is created from!

Whether it is hairlines or RGB colors, image compression or ink density of your PDF, FlightCheck will let you know. Stop the “Top-Ten Preflight Problems” today and start saving more!

Enfocus PitStop or Markzware FlightCheck?
Not sure. See: PitStop or FlightCheck…  Read more... (272 words, 1 image, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

As we have read here in the past, “On the Evolution of PDF; Adobe PDF/X-5g with OPI type prepress workflow“, there are seemingly enough PDF specifications out there. With that in mind, here is an interesting development:

Adobe to host ‘landmark’ PDF meeting

Simon Nias, printweek.com, 02 October 2009

“Adobe Systems will host a “landmark meeting” of the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) later this month that is expected to prove pivotal to the development of PDF automation specifications.

Members of the GWG attending the meeting, which will be held at Adobe’s San Jose headquarters from 29-30 October, will discuss specifications based on the latest PDF/X-4 release.

GWG chairman David Zwang said that the 2009 GWG specifications would result in “some of the most profound advancements in automated PDF compliance”….

“….Those present at the meeting will also discuss and extend ad ticket support for electronic ads and insertion orders, and solidify spectral colour considerations for spot colour identification.”
Source: PrintWeek.co.uk  Read more... (229 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

Soft proofing and ad preflight have long gone good together; sort of like white wine with fish. Thus it was with interest that we read of this newly revised product offering from Vio for magazine and newspaper publishers:

Vio relaunches Certified Soft Proofing software as part of Adsend

printweek.com, 01 October 2009

Vio has redeveloped its Vio Certified Soft Proofing (VCSP) software, which is now being offered as part of its Adsend browser application.

In addition, the software, which is designed to enable advertisers to deliver display advertising directly to a publisher, has recently been adopted by the Guardian and the Observer, Vio has said.

The new software enables publishers to mandate a soft proof or to offer it as an option by publication or even by advertising type, the company said.
Source:
http://www.printweek.com/Vio-relaunches-Certified-Soft-Proofing-software-part-Adsend/

Markzware FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is newly released with a host of new features and functions, including Quark 8, Adobe InDesign Illustrator, PDF CS4, Adobe CS 3 (including Adobe CS 3 Master Collection), Adobe CS 4, and other tweaked file format support- more than 50 of them. A soft-proof is only as good as the preflight report and a quality assurance check done on the layout before the Acrobat PDF output was performed. (Acrobat or any flavor of print industry standard PDFs.). Just as Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group told us last month in this interview…  Read more... (254 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

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:

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)