Preflighting: Creatives vs. Producers

Ever wonder where preflighting should occur and if the act of preflighting is affected or influenced the further downstream this function is performed?

By Definition:

Quite simply, it’s a quality control step in your workflow. I like to use the terms “verify” and “validate,” as a quick, simple chant for defining the term, preflighting. Verify that all resource files are present and validate that these files are within spec of the manufacturing process they are about to enter. Meaning, good enough to enter the workflow.

However, preflighting takes on different responsibilities depending on when and/or where this process is run. Let’s stop for a minute and consider where this step is likely to take place. Typically, preflighting is found as the last step (prior to release to production) in the creative environment (and right where I like it to be) or the first step when it enters the production environment (right where I like it to be).

Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I mean, twice (or three times or four times if necessary). Why? Because it takes almost no time to execute, and can save enormous time and money in the manufacturing/distribution process while further insuring the success of the production.

As Creatives, when do we do it?

In the creative workflow, a project travels through stages within project development and is then examined and deemed suitable for release to your production vendor of choice. That vendor will also examine your work and, hopefully, concur with you that the project is complete and the quality of the digital supplies is sufficient for their production environment.

Stop the forward momentum of the project briefly, just before it leaves the creative environment. Make sure, to the best of your ability, that all resource files are present, that the formats of the files are compliant and what the vendor expects to be receiving. Additionally, make sure you have accurately described the project, including some type of content proof. Now whether or not these files are good enough to enter a vendor’s workflow may not be in the creative’s knowledge base to determine. Never the less, a judgment call must be made.

If the project fails at this point, while still in-house, bonus! Send it back to the creator to be revised. Early intervention is the key to later success. Who better to fix the failure than the creator in the first place? Once the project is released to the production vendor, your percentage of success begins to diminish as operators with no foreknowledge of your project are left to make possibly critical decisions about your work.

As Producers, when do we do it?

Once a job lands at the production facility and prior to anything else happening to the job, a thorough preflight should occur. Not only will this second preflight be looking for the same issues the creative was looking for, but this preflight will also look for issues that affect job engineering as well. An additional set of criteria will be used to measure your work.

Problems here represent delays in the manufacturing process, hopefully short delays, but delays nonetheless. Finding the appropriate person to speak with to address whatever the errors or issues are may take time depending on when the errors are discovered (you may not want a phone call at 3am at this stage of production, a serious press issue however, and you may take that 3 am call.) You may wish your production vendor to address quality issues by fixing or adjusting the files for you. This will take unexpected time and must be thoroughly and accurately documented (herein lies an opportunity for error as well.) Also worth mentioning: your files will no longer match the production files.

After preflight issues have been remedied including missing files found, or documentation discrepancies, or worse, it’s on to file repair and/or production preparation (in printing, prepress.) This is where quality issues will be resolved and the file will be prepped specifically to its engineering plan. I want to be very clear here – this is no fixing or repairing during preflight. Preflight is a quality control checkpoint only.

File repair or prep is the next step in the process, but wait…

Who checks the repairer? Is there a step to check and make sure the repairs were made properly to the client files? Can we preflight again to make sure there are no errors? Of course, but it is sadly often overlooked. And so, we can get all the way to the proofing stage with not only remaining client errors the operator failed to find or fix, but also errors generated by the operator themselves. Now we are at the proofing stage with a delay, and we may have to go all the way back to the beginning of the workflow (native file, ‘cause we’re probably working with a PDF by now), with plating and press delays causing havoc with the schedule and now we’re into serious time and money.

Let’s not forget the time to production factor i.e. time is money. My argument is simple, early intervention is simple and cheap. Delayed or late intervention is costly.

How do we do it?

Without question, preflighting can be executed manually. That is to say, anyone with the background and experience in digital publishing can manually check to make sure that all the files are gathered, that they are of sufficient resolution and color space, that the fonts are all there, and that the layout is constructed properly. However, relying on fallible beings to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” can invite additional errors rather than reduce them. However a candidate who pays attention to detail, is extremely organized and with good documentation skills will do well with such responsibility. Give them a few tools and they will excel.

Tools to automate the process

There are products on the market today that help to automate or facilitate this step. Page layout products like InDesign have built-in preflighting and which may be sufficient for the majority of your print work. However this feature assumes your project is headed for a printing press and does not allow you to control the variables or accommodate other workflows (say web-based) your project may be distributed to.

You can step up to a product like Markzware’s Flightcheck Professional (www.markzware.com) which will give you the ability to check for the completeness of the project as well as check for quality related issues. You can customize ground controls for different types of workflows. It even has a Flightplan for PDFx compliance. Flightcheck Professional is the most robust of all the Markzware desktop products. Flightcheck Standard was developed for creatives looking to do a quick check, and Flightcheck Studio functions like an on-line spellcheck, preflighting as you build, reporting errors as you go, offers the earliest intervention yet!

And then there’s preflighting PDFs. Of course, you can preflight the native document before you make a PDF. But sadly, we know it’s possible to make a bad PDF (by skipping preflight or making incorrect choices when exporting/distilling.) You can preflight the file after it becomes a PDF, again using Flightcheck. Or you can preflight a PDF in Acrobat, which has its own preflight feature. Or you can extend the functionality of Acrobat by adding Enfocus’ Pitstop (www.enfocus.com) to your toolkit. Pitstop will allow you to seriously edit your PDF and certify its compliance to a number of PDF standards.

Of course, the editing of a PDF presents an historical, archiving problem. The PDF (your print “master”) will not accurately reflect the native file, if the PDF is edited after the fact. This issue plagues creators and producers alike, but we’ll save that topic for another article.

As a consultant, I recommend a blended approach to preflight. One which incorporates both a manual as well as an automated approach. There will always be aspects of the creative workflow that are unique to the creative firm, such as slug information with a unique numbering scheme that must be verified. Software can’t check for those variables. There will always be aspects to the production workflow that are unique to a vendor, such as job engineering specifications that software can’t check for either. Therefore, it will take the expertise of a human preflighter to assess those variables while allowing the software to check for the most common forms of errors found in digital workflow files today.

The ROI and an Observation

Odds are you already own a page layout application and the quality control step to manually preflight can be worked into any workflow quickly and efficiently. Flightcheck Professional retails for $499. That’s less then a single mistake could cost on an important project. The commercial printing industry has spent a great deal of time and money developing automated processes to reduce or eliminate as many process-related errors as possible. Can the creative community say as much?