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.
Henno Jacques, a freelance designer in Holland, gets interviewed by Markzware Europe’s Arnold Roosch in this perfect example on why to use FlightCheck Professional (and ID2Q in his case):
FlightCheck Professional and ID2Q user review
Dutch version of this interview can be found here…
It is excellent how he is using FlightCheck to preflight everything BEFORE making the PDF. He also checks the resulting PDF/X file with FlightCheck Professional as well. Making brochures, booklets and the likes, he also has seen from experience that sending both the press-ready PDF as well as the open source file (where he uses FlightCheck to collect all fonts and images into one approved folder) is the best way to get the print-job to the printer. This way, if there are any last minute changes, corrections or press problems, they can quickly and safely make the changes and re-output the PDF job.
Doug Rosen, product manager for Markzware recently made a nice little product overview movie for our tools which specifically work with QuarkXPress. You can watch the neat little movie, made in Apple KeyNote and finalized in iMovie here:
These products include;
ID2Q or InDesign to QuarkXPress conversion MarkzTools, which fixes bad or corrupted Quark Projects
and FlightCheck Professional- your preflight tool for checking some 50 file formats such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and PDF to name a few!
Hour one: Markzware. This software publishing company, caters to the worldwide graphic, printing and publishing industries. FlightCheck Professional is a stand-alone application that can inspect over 45 layout application types and hundreds of image types. The amazing thing is that you do not even need to purchase Acrobat to perform quality control checks on PDF files!
As a graphic designer, has this ever happened to you?
The scenario: You’ve sent your marketing masterpiece that you have meticulously designed to your printer. The deadline is tight, but you made it. Then the phone rings. Its your printer calling to let you know they are having problems printing your piece. You are about ready to scream because the client is waiting to get this piece out to his customers.
If you have been in the print industry for any length of time, you know that there are certain file types printers dread receiving from customers. Right at the top of the list is content created in Microsoft Publisher. You see, almost every prepress department out there is Mac-based, and Microsoft has never released a Mac version of Microsoft Publisher.
I can vouch for Kris that he is the ‘real-deal’ and have known Kris for several years.
His insight in translating the ideas of the ‘artist’ into software solutions is uncanny.
For those wanting to reduce development time and get to the nitty-gritty, pronto - I suggest to sign up for his next class before it’s too late! April 28th is not that far away.
To review, if you:
- will be involved in InDesign Plug-In development
- have some experience in C or C++ development
- might have experience with QuarkXPress XTension development
