Preflight Tools
What used to be the exclusive aegis of printers is now available to all print professionals. Preflight software was used to check a print file before the point of no return: when it goes throught the RIP (Raster Image Processor) on its way to the press. Preflight software would raise a flag and stop the process if something existed in the file that would cause unexpected results.
In the early days of desktop publishing, when monitor resolution and color bit depth were too small for layout programs (such as Ventura Publisher) to render exactly how a document would look, the graphic arts community adopted the preflight tools for their own use in the hopes of saving money and time. The most popular of these tools was Marxware's Flightcheck and Extensis Preflight Pro.
These programs were only useful enough to alert you to possible problems in your files. Now, Adobe InDesign has pretty much doomed these applications to obsolescence by building in native preflight capabilities. Furthermore, Adobe Acrobat Professional Versions 6 and above also provide preflight capabilities.
Preflight in InDesign is clunky and fairly unhelpful. Sometimes, if an obtuse plugin is installed, it will cause InDesign's Preflight engine to give faulty results. In the graphic below, the yellow warning sign shows that one of my images is in RGB format (inappropriate for printing.)
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Acrobat's preflight capabilties are a lot more robust. MadMac Creations recommends using this preflight capability before sending any PDF to a printer, but is especially helpful when printing spot colors or single plates. One can access Acrobat's Preflight functionality by going to "Tools—Print Production—Preflight..."
Acrobat's Preflight operates by executing Profiles. Those profiles are customizable and editable, so that one can create and execute individual profiles for special circumstances. Consequently, Acrobat's Preflight engine can be automated for batch processing. Click this link for a tutorial on using Acrobat to automatically preflight a folder full of files.
Print providers insist on staying ahead of the curve. Naturally, far more designers will give them faulty files than clean ones. When it isn't worthwhile to go back to the client and request changes or source files (e.g., there are hairline strokes,) it would be most efficient if the preflight application made these changes. Enter PitStop Pro. Pitstop Pro is similar to the other preflight applications, except that you can attach a script to any flags. If you have set PitStop to flag any hairline strokes, you can also tell PitStop to give them a defined width. Or you could tell it to change any RGB graphics to CMYK. Unfortunately, MadMac Creations does not use PitStop Pro, but can communicate with any enterprise that does.
