Executed correctly and at the right moment, a good preflight of your document can save you many printing headaches.  Available in Adobe Indesign and also in Acrobat, the preflight feature enables you audit your document for any issues that may get in the way of a good printing result, and I can safely say, it is an invaluable tool once you get in the habit of using it.  The sad thing is, most of us designers are rarely taught just how important it is to preflight before sending our jobs of to print.

I can remember so many printing issues that I ran into early in my career because I was not properly checking my documents for things like missing fonts, broken image links, images that were still in RGB colour mode (see my article on CMYK Vs. RGB color) and spot colours that had not yet been converted to process colours.  My jobs were printing with strange colours, printers were calling me trying to explain that my images were pixellated or fonts were missing – if only someone had taught me to preflight!

It wasn’t until I started working in the production team of a large newspaper company that the art of the preflight became apparent to me.  There, preflighting your document was the final step before submitting it as complete.  Submitting you work as ‘complete’ then saw it being scrutinised by ‘quality control’, and if they had reason to believe you had not done a preflight on your work, you would be politely asked to go back and complete the job.  So very soon into my time with this company, preflighting my work became a natural part of my design process.  And although at first it was an annoyance, I’m now thankful for it.

Now when I prepare a job for print, I run a preflight and immediately I know if there is something wrong with my work.  I have the opportunity to convert my images to CMYK, I have the ability to relink images that are not linked correctly, I can convert spot or RGB swatches to CMYK, and I can replace any missing fonts.  As a result, the printing process is simple, and there are rarely any complications.  Once I send a file to print, it gets printed without me having to receive requests from the supplier for changes to the file.

So take some time to learn how to preflight your work in your chosen design program. It will save you time, money and embarrassment in the long run.

Have your say. Tell me what you think about this story. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Business Printing Services Online Printing

Written by Dario Paolini
Director – AstroPrint.com.au