Prepare, Preflight and Print Acrobat PDF Files

FlightCheck, software from Markzware for preflighting, can check prepress files to preflight Acrobat PDF workflows. FlightCheck thoroughly scans documents during preflighting for prepress to catch potential printing problems before you print. This “Prepare, preflight and print” blog post for Acrobat PDF users gave these preflighting tips on how to preflight Acrobat PDF production:

Here are some tips to keep in mind, should you venture to automate print preflight workflows using your own Preflight profiles:

• Study your usual workflow for good ways to lighten the load using custom profiles. It takes a few minutes to set one up, but then only a mouse click to run it in the future.
• Write a list of what you’d like to check, and the fixes you’ll need to include.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Rather than starting from scratch, start from an existing profile to which you can add and remove items. For a less-involved process, start with an existing check or fix to which you can add additional tasks.
• Give your profile a meaningful name. 2009_Johnston_newsletters makes a lot more sense than 20090401.J.N or something similar.
• Look for a few generic items you might not think of, but that can enhance your documents. For example, you could include Discard document structure or Optimize PDF for fast web view from the Document category in the Fixes. Neither of these examples is necessary for the most part, but both can help optimize your document for quicker distribution.
• Don’t add more to one profile than you need. It’s simple to build a number of profiles with fixes for different sorts of issues, and then apply them sequentially. You’re not as likely to get confused or forget the parameters of a profile if you confine it to a subset of your workflow, such as images or text evaluations…
  Source: http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/prepare-preflight-and-print

Let’s not forget, though, that to preflight Acrobat PDF documents for prepress, although loosely called preflight, is more of a postflight process. You can better preflight the native file, or source file, during prepress, with FlightCheck, a tool for prepress available online from Markzware at the FlightCheck Store.

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• Convert INDD Files to QXD – ID2Q Playlist
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