Pre-flighting helps us ensure a timely delivery of your final product. The plane analogy is appropriate because civil air flights are what inspired the term pre-flighting in the first place. Pilots have a checklist to go over to make sure that their plane is ready to fly. Similarly, printers have adopted a checklist to review before sending a file to the printer.
The simple act of checking a list might not seem like such an important part of printing, but it is essential. Presses are designed for high volume operation, meaning that by the time an error has been detected, hundreds or even thousands of copies have been printed.
That is a major waste of time and money. Ultimately, errors make the printing process are expensive, and that cost will eventually be passed down to the consumer. We strive to avoid that at Dollco by strictly following our pre-flight rules. But just what types of problems do we avoid? At home, your list of things to check before you print is usually not much more than seeing if there is paper in the tray. You might glance at your ink levels. But at a commercial printer, with complex machines and advanced workflows, there are so many more variables to consider.
Each step in the process is one place where something could go wrong. Our pre-flighting process is aimed at ensuring that there are no errors during printing. Speaking of printers, did you know that not all files can be printed on every machine?
Drag a PDF file or files and drop them onto the application icon anywhere in Finder or on your dock. This ensures the application will check for updates before you begin processing a file. This will open the Metadata window. To view a list of available profiles, click the Select Profiles button.
To view a list of available checks, click the Select Single Checks button. To view a list of available fixups, click the Select Single Fixups button. Profiles are organized in groups that you can expand and collapse. Profiles with the gray wrench icon include fixups that can correct errors in your file. Optional Select a profile or single check, expand Further Options and do any of the following, as needed:. Specify whether to limit the inspection to visible layers. Selecting this option disables any fixups.
If you selected a profile, click Analyze to run the inspection without fixing the errors or Analyze And Fix to identify and fix the problems. If you selected a single check only, the Analyze option is available. If you selected a single fixup, click Fix to start a fixup. You can also double-click a profile in the list to run the preflight inspection. If you double-click the file, profiles that contain fixups apply the fixups.
The General tab includes options for specifying how dialog box elements and preflight results are displayed:. Specifies how many instances of a mismatch appear in the Results list. The maximum number of results for a document is Specifies how much detail appears in the Preflight Results list. You can specify no details, only important details, or all details. Displays a Warning icon at the top of the Preflight dialog box if the display is not set to the highest quality.
You can click the Warning icon to see a list of the alerts. Click Adjust to automatically adjust the settings for maximized reliability of the display of the selected PDF document. Once files are downloaded and you have made some notes from the printouts for follow up, load the fonts and run the files through FlightCheck. Now look at the files Goal: You have flagged issues from the printouts and FlightCheck. Total time for check up to this point: mins perhaps up to an hour for a larger project At this point you have three options for your project: 1.
Run with it as is and ship package to supplier 2. Request revisions and a new disk from the artist 3. Flag marginal problems with the Studio Manager or Account person and decide on course of action ie: fix or ship. You will not eliminate every error but in a busy studio, where artists are often rushed, taking a moment to stop and double check things with FlightCheck will be time well spent. He has over 20 years of experience in print production, prepress, creative, studio management, print purchasing and client liaison and currently works for Silverpeak , a large format printing firm in Mississauga.
What Is A Preflight Check? See more printing solutions for graphic design and graphic arts on the Markzware Products page. Depending on your industry or the nature of your files, use and adapt the following preflight checklist when preflighting files: Quick Quality Checklist by a dedicated Preflight Manager 1.
Tags: file formats , fonts , graphic arts , graphic design , PDF , preflight , preflighting , print , print quality , printing.
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