Prepress News
Preflighting Saves You Time and Money

Preflighting is the process of reviewing digital files for potential problems prior to passing them along to the next stage in production. To avoid potentially costly delays, we recommend that the files’ creators preflight files before sending them to us. While Webcom preflights all files received as additional assurance before final output, conducting such a review at your end will allow you to rectify any problems before they hit the production cycle. Preflighting tools are readily available and fairly simple to operate. Some page layout programs have preflighting tools built in and there are also separate preflighting programs available that will help you identify potential problems before it’s too late. Also, as an added utility, often the preflight examination is combined with automated gathering of all required elements for printing. Here are some of the more prevalent tools built into application software: Quark’s Collect for Output will gather your Quark file and images, but unfortunately does not gather the fonts, nor does it give you any information about your files.

by Phil Thompson Prepress Technologies Manager

The Batch Collect XTension¨ from Meadows Information Systems allows Quark users to gather up all of the elements required, producing an entire group of QuarkXPress¨ documents.

FontXpress¨, a standalone utility by Morrison SoftDesign, is available for both the Mac and PC. It will collect all of your QuarkXPress document fonts to a disk, including all screen fonts, Postscript fonts, and any EPS graphics fonts. FontXpress will also alert you to potential output problems, like RGB graphics, low-resolution images, and more.

Font Sneak¨ from Lake Group Software is another standalone application that collects fonts for output for QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator¨, Macromedia Freehand¨ 7.0, and generic EPS files.

PageMaker 6.5¨ includes a plug-in called Save for Service Provider that copies your publication, all linked image files, fonts, and other files required to print your document. It helps you resolve broken links by prompting you to locate the folders containing linked files and generates a report regarding fonts, linked graphics, etc.

InDesign¨ is the most recent entrant in the page layout market. This software will preflight documents automatically to check and identify problems with linked graphics, fonts, colour profiles, and other key document information.

You may find that these basic preflighting functions are not providing you with enough detail. This is where specificpreflight software will fill the gap.

MarkzWare’s FlightCheck¨ was one of the first programs available for industrial-strength preflighting. It uses "ground controls" to define what is and isn’t considered a potential problem. After preflighting a file, it will even offer you a potential solution. The comprehensive list of things it checks for includes fonts, colours, trapping, and images. FlightCheck’s Collect Job option will gather all the elements and compress them automatically.

Collect Pro¨ is a program by Extensis, available only for the Mac. Extensis Collect Pro works with all leading page layout and illustration programs to collect every font and image for perfect prepress delivery. Even more powerful is Preflight Pro¨, also from Extensis.We have only just scratched the surface of available options. Preflighting utilities are becoming increasingly powerful and the list of available options is rapidly expanding. As well, specific software is available for checking Postscript and PDF files. If you are interested in learning more about these tools, please contact your Webcom representative, who will put you in touch with one of our prepress experts.

Whether you check your files unaided, use built-in features, or opt for standalone programs, preflighting is an important step that should become part of your workflow procedure. Relatively inexpensive software can help prevent expensive problems further along in the production process. Save money and time - preflight all your jobs.

Webcom is just finishing a new brochure to help speed your jobs through our digital prepress workflow. It’s called the "Webcom Prepress Optimizer, A Guide to Creating Digital Files". To order your copy, please complete the "Reader Response" in this issue and send us a literature request.

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