There is a great discussion going on in the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals over on Linkedin, started by Cindy (Bailey) Wingo, where in short she asked:

“What are the industry standards for producing clean, RIPpable files?” … “What is the industry standard for excellence in pre-flighting files?“

Source: Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

Great replies, but it is the last post, which I will start with; which is the summary as far as quality-minded design and publishing users are concerned with, in the overall workflow process to printed output:

“Preflighting should happen even before the PDF is even created. Bad files make bad PDFs. That’s why programs such as FlightCheck are so invaluable.“

Source: David Creamer via the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

This was in response to the usual postflighting options mentioned for later stage PDF’s and the likes. This is fine and true, as a step right before the RIP, but not the entire truth; actually far from it. You need to Preflight FIRST before even making a PDF print-file. What was encouraging was the facts brought forth by industry expert (I.D.E.A.S Training) and certified Adobe and Quark trainer, David Creamer and our own Mary Gay (Pettit) Marchese, for this is the way to make a publishing and print workflow truly flow.  Read more... (501 words, 2 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Contact:
Mary Gay Marchese
949-756-5100, ext. 250
pr@markzware.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW PREFLIGHTING SOFTWARE – Offers Digital Printers, Publishers and Graphic Designers Complete Quality Control
Markzware FlightCheck® Professional Now Supports QuarkXPress 8 & Adobe CS4 Suite

SANTA ANA, California, August 28 , 2009 — Markzware (www.markzware.com), the recognized authority and inventor of preflighting, released a significant upgrade to its popular preflighting solution, FlightCheck Professional for Macintosh. In light of today’s economic challenges, Markzware is offering $100 off this latest version of  FlightCheck Professional v6.5  which has full support for the Adobe CS4 Creative Suite (including Adobe CS4 Design Standard and Adobe CS4 Design Premium) and QuarkXPress 8. This powerful upgrade gives printers, graphic designers and publishers the ability to preflight efficiently, avoiding costly production errors.

For well over a decade, the process of preflighting has been an important step for printers and prepress professionals worldwide.  Preflighting is the process that identifies and corrects missing items and errors in customer files before they become bigger and more costly problems further downstream in the printing process.  Read more... (793 words, estimated 3:10 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)

Preflight (as can be performed by Markzware’s FlightCheck) has long been a task much associated with color management and soft proofing. Here we see the 3rd of John Nate’s color management case studies via News & Tech. Electronic preflighting can catch many errors and unwanted quality issues on outputted plates and thus the final printed piece, yet there are many things that only a soft proof and proper color management can find for you. For instance, typical design errors, where a text box is hidden, partial or fully, behind a placed image. It is important to take your InDesign, Illustrator or Quark document and to do a “export as PDF” and make a proper soft proof and in many cases even a hard proof under the correct lighting conditions. This is especially important regarding company image, as in logo design, letterhead printing in corporate advertising, newspaper printing, etc. When using color and Adobe, you may want to consider the color of Adobe elements, for example, change eye color in Adobe Photoshop (change eye color on Adobe Photoshop or change eye color with Adobe Photoshop, in order for you to have Adobe Photoshop change eye color) before printing. Here is how John starts his informative piece:  Read more... (351 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

Here at the Markzware Blog, we like to keep a eye on anything conversion or preflight in the graphic arts marketplace. Heck, we even get into aviation from time-to-time, when blogging on a Friday! Today’s post is not quite about flying, but none-the-less an interesting preflight tool:

PODi Releases CheckPPML_Pro Variable Data Preflight Solution

PODi, the Digital Printing Initiative, today announced the release of CheckPPML_Pro. This production “preflight” tool enables proofing, viewing, preflight and validation of properly formed PPML/GA files. PPML (the Personalized Print Markup Language) facilitates creating personalized high volume print campaigns by service providers, enabling meaningful one-to-one “conversations” for their customers.

Early users report that CheckPPML_Pro is up to 20 times faster than the free version of CheckPPML, while retaining its easy-to-use interface. “CheckPPML_Pro ran our (large) files in about 3 minutes, instead of two hours (with a prior solution); and the output looks good.” said Ray Niblett of Shutterfly.
Source: http://www.printingnews.com/

Variable data printing is of course still one of the growth areas in printing, thus great to see some good, new-fashioned preflighting being built-in!

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.

Markzware interviewed one of it’s valued customers, Mr. Valentin Ocheda and during taping, he deeply explained his usage of a neat Macintosh tool called, Default Folder X. Check out here how he uses this to semi-automate his preflight and graphic design workflow:

“Quality Control [via FlightCheck] on his desktop.”

Earlier this month, we presented you part three in a series of posts on preflighting titled, “Preflighting 101 – Part 2; Common Issues- Layout Problems.” Today we dive into more specifics on a electronic preflighting software in the form of, no surprise, FlightCheck Professional v6. In particular about the all important Ground Control settings:

FlightCheck Professional Ground Controls - Images Section

IIII. FLIGHTCHECK Professional v6 Concepts

IIII a. Ground Controls

FlightCheck Professional preflighting software by Markzware is a stand-alone application that electronically preflights numerous types of files in mere seconds. These file formats include QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Adobe PDF, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and several others- not to mention individual image formats. The first step of preflighting with FlightCheck is setting up the Ground Controls. The Ground Controls enable you to tell FlightCheck how it should inform you about the document being checked. By default (The “Default Settings”) the Ground Control settings have many items checked to “on”, which you may not need to worry about.  Read more... (654 words, 1 image, estimated 2:37 mins reading time)

Last week we went over “Preflighting 101 – Part 2; Common Issues- images“.  Those of you who know how to design layout already know that various layout problems can occur.  How many times has someone asked you, “Please design my layout,” after they encountered typical layout problems with their initial efforts to design a layout or a problem with layout elements? Today we will delve into another very important and often over-looked area of document quality control – that of the design layout itself.

II d. Layout Problems

Color Usage
There are a few layouts problems in which there are situations where colors should be analyzed during preflighting. The first issue is the use of too many colors (common with designers who design own layout creations). If you have a document that uses both process color and spot colors and want to avoid a print layout problem, you need to make sure your print vendor can print the number of colors used. A good rule is to limit yourself to a total of six colors. This means that if you have process CMYK elements in your document, you will only want to use two additional spot colors. This is assuming that your print vendor can run six different colors. Again, this is the reason it is necessary to check with your printer and find out how many different colors can be printed during a single press fun. Also, normally you will have been quoted for a “2-colour” job or a “4-color” job, which you should adhere to.  Read more... (1268 words, estimated 5:04 mins reading time)

Wow — it has been over 15 years since I worked as a print production manager for a large advertising agency in California. Computer-To-Plate (CTP) was starting to garner industry buzz, and in my role, I had to best determine how to take digital creative files, produce them internally and ensure that once they were sent off to the printer or a publication, for example, they would work — meaning, they would render on press the way we expected them to and our clients, the advertisers, were pleased with the results.

Seemed like a simple enough challenge at the time, but what I soon discovered was that it was anything but.

It wasn’t as though the process was any more difficult than it was back in the “days of film.” At the agency, we had art directors who were mocking up layouts on boards that were turned over to me for recreation in QuarkXPress. After working with the art directors and others within the agency to make final tweaks to the ads, I then had to provide them with the assurance that what I was creating digitally would reproduce in the manner they expected, having the best print quality  and would result in quality image printing.  Read more... (1248 words, estimated 4:60 mins reading time)