Which Preflight Utility do you use, why?

fahlmanfahlman
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
We currently using QuarkXPress (4 & 5) in Classic. I purchased InDesign for all of our workstations but my people aren't making the change fast enough. But that's another story. Which preflight utility do you guys suggest? Thank you for your help in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    madmax559madmax559 Posts: 596member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by fahlman

    We currently using QuarkXPress (4 & 5) in Classic. I purchased InDesign for all of our workstations but my people aren't making the change fast enough. But that's another story. Which preflight utility do you guys suggest? Thank you for your help in advance.



    my preflight utils are



    1.tums

    2.prayers
  • Reply 2 of 16
    dstranathandstranathan Posts: 1,717member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by fahlman

    We currently using QuarkXPress (4 & 5) in Classic. I purchased InDesign for all of our workstations but my people aren't making the change fast enough. But that's another story. Which preflight utility do you guys suggest? Thank you for your help in advance.



    Does your prepress house support InDesign? I wish we could move to InDesign. I hate Quark!
  • Reply 3 of 16
    othelloothello Posts: 1,054member
    my local printers have started to get indesign (some only version 1.5). but they still ask for high-res PDFs as they can't work it...



    actually i don't mind as they have all got excellent PDF to RIP workflow packages
  • Reply 4 of 16
    running with scissorsrunning with scissors Posts: 1,124member
    i've used Markwares's Flightcheck. it used to work pretty damn good as i remember, but that was 5 years and 2 jobs ago. they have a 30 day demo that may be worth playing with.
  • Reply 5 of 16
    running with scissorsrunning with scissors Posts: 1,124member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dstranathan

    I hate Quark!



    from past discussions, i always got the impression that you were a big quark fan. perhaps i'm confusing you with somebody else.



  • Reply 6 of 16
    foadfoad Posts: 717member
    Well the majority of the print houses we have dealt with all needed Quark files....I really freakin' hate them.



    It looks as though the new Acrobat 6 Pro could be a great way to use InDesign for layout and use PDF and Acrobat 6 for preflight related work.



    This is something that I am going to be doing some research on. I just wish Quark would just die. Even the new version looks stupid. There are a couple interesting things in it but I still prefer InDesign over it anyday. I just wish the print industry wasn't so engulfed with Quark. Hopefully things will change with ACROBAT 6.
  • Reply 7 of 16
    dobbydobby Posts: 797member
    We use the following preflight software.



    1. Flightcheck Pro (does nearly everything).

    2. A couple of internet based preflighters

    3. Barco (esko graphics). Probably the best but expensive.



    We are also moving from Quark to InDesign tho most f our Mac ops don't want to.



    Dobby.
  • Reply 8 of 16
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Okay you all got me. What the hell is "preflight"?
  • Reply 9 of 16
    kraig911kraig911 Posts: 912member
    rudders... check, engines... check, pilot... check, thats pre-flight



    Nah us people that do layout have to make sure everything prints right, think about it, if you 25,000 copies of your pub, and some ads or layouts print like $hit well you just lost a whole lot of money. So we pre-flight our stuff to make sure everything is fine and dandy, nowadays with external RIPS and everything and PDFS are great, but quark has gotten so rudimentay(sp) in the industry that its actually holding the entire printing industry at hostage, almost. Acrobat 6 has a OS X native distiller right? anyone mind telling me how it works and if it preflights ok? does the PDF's come out encode the fonts right? as I recall indesign wouldn't encode hardly any fonts of mine correctly...
  • Reply 10 of 16
    fred_ljfred_lj Posts: 607member
    Actually, InDesign 2.0 has encoded all of my PDFs flawlessly. This is going to sound really amateur to all you guys for whom working therewith is your bread and butter, but with my DeskJet 970 (which does beautifully for everything but PostScript work), the latest release of AppleWorks does not support automated duplexing at all (which I use often for brochures/imposed-folded concert programs and just to save paper). Luckily, with PDF generation built-in to OS X, I was able to port one stupid AppleWorks file that my sister had produced (for school, they had to produce their own 3-column brochure in an exercise to learn Apple/ClarisWorks) to a PDF file then place it into InDesign where I could print it easily.



    InDesign has its own built-in preflight feature as well.
  • Reply 11 of 16
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by kraig911

    rudders... check, engines... check, pilot... check, thats pre-flight



    Nah us people that do layout have to make sure everything prints right, think about it, if you 25,000 copies of your pub, and some ads or layouts print like $hit well you just lost a whole lot of money. ...





    I could figure that much out on my own. What does the software do? A fancy "print preview"?
  • Reply 12 of 16
    fahlmanfahlman Posts: 740member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    I could figure that much out on my own. What does the software do? A fancy "print preview"?



    It warns you of possible errors that may result in bad film, or plates (if you use CTP (Computer To Plate), or poor printing. Such as Missing placed images, missing fonts, images with the wrong color space (RGB instead of CMYK), Spot colors, 4/c Black, QuarkXPress file .
  • Reply 13 of 16
    kraig911kraig911 Posts: 912member
    Indesign never encodes my fonts right, but then all my work goes to pubs like Austin American Statesmen and other pubs around here, they always give me crap about it But really PDF/X support out of acrobat 6 with a X version of distiller right? so in essence if I used distiller to encode PDF's out of indesign would that fix my problem?
  • Reply 14 of 16
    michael greymichael grey Posts: 384member
    As a (loathsome) Quark user the one tool I can't imaging being without is CollectPro (Extensis). But this won't work for Quark 6 and Extensis has never mentioned anything about an upcoming version on its web site.



    Just curious, what do you guys use to collect your fonts? Does InDesign do this already? And why the hell doesn't Quark?
  • Reply 15 of 16
    running with scissorsrunning with scissors Posts: 1,124member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Michael Grey

    As a (loathsome) Quark user the one tool I can't imaging being without is CollectPro (Extensis). But this won't work for Quark 6 and Extensis has never mentioned anything about an upcoming version on its web site.



    Just curious, what do you guys use to collect your fonts? Does InDesign do this already? And why the hell doesn't Quark?



    you must still be using quark 4x? quark 5 has, if i remember correctly (i'm still using 4 as well), built in font collection. so i'm guessing it will be in 6 as well. flightcheck has that ability as well.
  • Reply 16 of 16
    tommy_thompsontommy_thompson Posts: 224member
    I preflight my own stuff..and very, very rarely have any problems. I agree that tums, and prayers are it. If you really want to learn, save yourself money- don't get a preflight program. Talk to your local service bureau to sit and talk with their persons while they are running your job. I lucked out, I had a prepress job before I got out of art school. Now that I am on my own..I canont believe that I ever even entertained the idea of one of these programs. A customer of mine INSTISTED that I use one, so I had her buy it. Markzware. It "found" problems with everything- but since I "cut my teeth" in prepress, I knew what I was looking for and all of the files were totally fine. I did not change a GD thing..and you know what?! Magically my job came out PERFECT! I think those programs are for those who don't understand/don't want-need to understand preflighting. I would strongly suggest that you NOT get ANY preflight program. It will pick up errors, and mistakes..but will go FAR BEYOND THAT. So it is really up to you, learn prepress-just enough to get yourserlf by. OR get a preflight program and spend 65% more time on your jobs trying to figure out what the #$@#$&* is "wrong" with your files. I for one, think is a laughing matter. Heck if you are interested, I am sure there is even a cheap check list in some book about what to check for during preflight. I am not trying to sound smart-alec-y, but I really think you would be doing yourself, your customer a disservice by purchasing such a product.
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