The opportunities for online pre-flighting and digital eServices for printers. In this day and age, pre-flight is a fore-gone conclusion. Everyone does it throughout the workflow, including not only the creators, however also the repro/(and/or)publisher and printer.
Life is perfect… If only this was the case in todays digital print workfllow.
Granted, many have come a long way with quality control of the creation-to-print process and tools like Markzware's FlightCheck and Enfocus' PitStop help in these goals, not to mention various in-rip and in-application preflight utilities of lesser function than full-fledged pre-flight tools. Yet, the age old questions remains- what was first, the chicken or the egg? (Who takes pre-flight responsibility, the creator, repro, publishing house or printer?) Even in this age of PDF, it is not as clear as one would think.
Who is ultimately responsible for that print-job? Who “takes the blame” (meaning pays the compensation claim) when something goes pair-shaped? This is a great debate in the publishing industry and to a lesser degree, although no less costly, in commercial print as well.
In publishing, there is often a repro house in between the ad-creator/sender and the publisher- ultimately going to yet another and final party, the printer. As you can imagine or know first-hand, this can cause problems, generally simple, stoppable (pre-flight) problems that communication can fix. Commercial printing the same, although the number of hands in between the creation and final re-production is less, the pain of a bad print is no better.
With PDF, many are, are trying, have tried to get the ultimate responsibility back on the creator. Yet, how can a printer or publisher expect that all creators are created equally? And even with PDF and Ghent PDF Workgroup specifications and Pass4Press, still bad PDF files are delivered- surveys point to as high as 70% of PDF's supplied are not up to par. And lastly, “pre-flight problems” are an ever-evolving thing. What was not a problem yesterday, could be a problem today, due to a new version of an application, coupled with a different image file format and a new RIP software. Do you see, many places for the egg to break, but now time for some answers.
FlightCheck Online from Markzware is one of the answers or online pre-flighting in the generic sense. It provides simple online job-ticketing, pre-flighting (PDF + 49 other file formats) job collection (all fonts and images if not a PDF), compression, FTP file transfer and a complete back-office admin in their latest solution. It allows full transparency in what can be sent and how (pre-flight rule sets) and performs these tasks in real-time, on the desktop of the sender/creator.
Out of the 70% of bad files coming in, 80% of those are “simple” and stoppable issues that the creator should be able to fix- if only they were warned and educated. With FlightCheck Online or other online preflight tools, you can now pro-actively stop and assist in correcting found problems, BEFORE they become a discussion, argument or compensation claim.
With all of the education and press on pre-flighting you would think that everyone does it- well they do not. To get everyone doing so takes education and investment, which a solid online pre-flight solution provides, for it has help text and links to more info, not to mention on the back-end you have a database and can see what is going on. When Customer X is having a trapping or font issue, you can be alerted and take action even further.
Yes, still issues will slip through, however an error rate of 70% bad print-files to something a lot closer to single digits is what the promise holds. It is still up to you to settle with your suppliers beforehand who is the chicken and who is the egg and thus who is responsible for what. This communication, coupled with online preflighting can only lead to success.
Examples:
Imagine: The client delivers a file with a nice RGB picture in it showing green grass and a blue sky on a summer day. You as a printer accepts the file and, without preflighting the document, send it through to your rip station. Your rip software will convert this RGB image for you, but since there was no colour profile attached to the file, it takes a general RGB to CMYK conversion, completely destroying the summer day and turning it to a brownish kind of autumn day. Now, for the final question: the client refuses the print work since the picture is not what he delivered at all. Who will pay the bill?
If you are the printer I have some bad news for you. Although the discussion will be that the client delivered an RGB image, he will say that you should have seen that and warned him. At the end of the line you will pay the bill since you don't want to lose him as a client.
Bottom line: When this document was preflighted with FlightCheck Online, the problem would have been detected and notified to the customer, giving him all the feedback he needs to correct this problem and it would all be done before the file was even collected for sending!
The client delivers a file that uses a Helvetica. Without preflighting you open the file (not noticing that the client did not send his Helvetica with the file and automatically using the Helvetica that is already loaded on your computer). After printing you find out that there has been a text re-flow, making several lines ‘fall' of the page.
These days one Helvetica does not have to be exactly the same as the other. Fonts should therefore ALWAYS be sent with the file. Using FlightCheck Online and its build in collect function you will have this guarantee: no more missing illustrations, fonts or even fonts that where used within illustrations. ALL elements needed to successfully print this job will be collected!
General rule in the print business: “There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but there is always time to reprint the job several times.”
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