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.

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.

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.

I bet they forgot to tell you in design school that you need to become an expert in computer file formats to survive, let alone succeed, in our field.

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.

With the advent of digital workflow, new responsibilities emerge for the newspaper publisher and the ad creator

Ask most newspaper sales executives, and they’ll tell you just how competitive the market place is these days — how tough of a sell it is when other media forms are drawing the interest of advertisers like never before.

Newspapers must be able to compete with these other vehicles, present compelling circulation numbers, and provide excellent customer service to the advertising client. They must be able to accept, position, produce and print the advertiser’s copy and images, with particular attention paid to reproduction quality.

Despite all the gains and benefits of computer-to-plate (CTP) imaging and digital design, the process of creating compelling packaging designs is actually more complicated than ever. In the days of film, it didn’t matter what creative application you may have been using — Adobe Illustrator or QuarkXPress, for example — because in the end the creative work became film, which any packaging manufacturer could accept.

Then came CTP, and film stepped aside and allowed digital workflow to take center stage. No longer was film trafficked; rather, digital files became the means for exchanging packaging content. And suddenly, it became increasingly important what design application a creative director may be using, and what types of digital file formats a package printer may (or may not) accept.

Now that a good decade has passed since the advent of computer-to-plate (CTP) printing, the industry has a good feel for what is working, and what isn’t.

Developers and vendors can be credited for quickly supplying the tools printers needed to make CTP work. Open file and language standards enable more seamless communication between technologies driving digital proofing, prepress systems and press room solutions. With highly automated workflows, it’s possible — now, more than ever before — to keep the presses running at a steady pace. That is, as long as there aren’t any bottlenecks in prepress.

DesktopMedia would like to thank Markzware, the leading software developer in preflight and file utilities for creative workflows for their generous donation of FlightCheck Professional, FlightCheck Designer and Q2ID to the DesktopMedia training lab. Not only will we put this to good use exposing and teaching as many professionals as possible, but, in the coming months we’ll be writing about how this powerful tool can help your organization!

Preflight and Conversion Tools For Document Content - MARKZWARE
Check out Markzware for all their latest offerings. Remember, the earlier in the your workflow you can include quality control the greater the success rate of your production files! Flightcheck Professional can review more file formats than you think — InDesign CS3, Quark 7, PDFs, even Microsoft Office files!!!

Community newspapers and their printers transition to the digital production workflow with the aid of inexpensive software tools

There was a time not long ago when the print world shook a little in its boots. The digital age was upon us, and stressors like the Internet threatened to make print virtually obsolete. Looking back, it was a silly fear, for not only has digital content proved not to be a threat to the printed word, digital content creation and production has proved to be one of the greatest enablers to those distributing print.