Even though the technologies enabling businesses to create documents have become more accessible, there remains a hidden cost in the generation of print and electronic media—a cost easily offset with some simple tools and best practices
Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials by print giants like Xerox and Hewlett-Packard, in which they espouse how cheap print has become? Indeed, the cost to generate color print these days is, in fact, much less expensive for businesses than it was just a few short years ago.
There is a great thread running over on PrintPlanet.com titled, “Flight Check 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 Flight Check Prof on our native files and PDFs. When I have time, I often preflight PDFs in both Flight Check and Acrobat.
Your in-plant is slick. You’ve got the latest and greatest in print engines and a stealthy prepress workflow. But, what good is it when the front end of the process is replete with bad files — customer - supplied content that’s poorly prepared and requires time and expense to fix?
This is a problem many printing organizations — and in-plants, instant print shops, large-format print suppliers and general commercial printing companies — face today. Content coming into many printing plants just isn’t good.
The biggest complaint from print vendors is “missing pieces,” such as missing fonts or images not linked to a file. After ensuring a file has the greatest integrity (meaning it will print with no graphics errors), FlightCheck assembles all elements used to combine the document into one folder. Not only are all images collected, so are the screen and printer fonts, ensuring that all digital pieces link together to recreate the digital file at the print facility. If you print your own mailers or fliers, this is helpful in organizing content. If you outsource to a printing vendor, this function also ensures that no time is wasted searching for missing elements.
When clients hand you source files so ancient or obscure that they’re unreadable, don’t despair. Part 1 of my file conversion survival kit will have you repurposing those files lickety split — without asking the client to lift a finger, and without forcing you to buy every application under the sun just to open the occasional weirdo document.
A few years ago, printed pieces were created using strips of text that were pasted on art boards. These strips of paper were bound to the board with wax or rubber cement. Known as “cold type,” it wasn’t until the early ’90s that most organizations began to rely on page layout programs. Today, the freedom computer programs allow is as varied as your imagination.
Sometimes you have to scream to get people’s attention. This is especially true of preparing documents for print and direct mail. The most reliable format for reaching potential audiences is still the printed word, and the ability to create eye-catching and immediate response fliers and newsletters has been greatly enhanced by digital technologies. It also involves checking the integrity of the digital file before final print or manufacture — a practice otherwise known as ‘preflighting.’
“A revolution is waging in the design and publishing industries. Workflow responsibilities are shifting and graphic artists are wearing many more hats than a decade ago,” says Mary Gay Marchese, public relations director for Markzware, a Santa Ana-based company that provides a wide range of preflighting solutions.
“With the advent of CTP and an increasing demand to re-purpose content electronically to CDs or the web, for example, creative professionals find that they can no longer realistically focus on just design. Increasingly, they are being asked to take on additional technical challenges that once were the domain of the prepress group, like preflighting and preparing final content files for distribution to electronic media or print.
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.
Should we really care about emerging technologies when the economy remains in such flux that most of us are happy just to keep our heads above the rising waters, let alone invest in technologies to come?
But that doom-and-gloom mentality may be precisely what’s wrong with the allied industries today. Many printers and publishers have gone into virtual hibernation — content to statically ride out the storm — but the problem is that the industries around them continue to change.
