You wouldn't want your pilot to take off without first making sure the aircraft was prepared to fly. In a similar vein, you wouldn't want to send your file to print before making sure it was prepared. Pre-flighting is a crucial stage in the printing process that guards against expensive mistakes. Pre-flighting enables us to guarantee that your finished product will arrive on time.
What Does Print Pre-Flighting Mean?
The usage of a plane as an example is relevant given that pre-flighting was originally inspired by commercial air travel. A checklist is used by pilots to ensure that their aircraft is prepared for takeoff. Similar to this, printers now include a checklist that users may verify before sending a file to print.
Even though it might not seem like a necessary element of printing, checking a list is a vital process. Since presses are built for high output, hundreds or even thousands of copies may have been printed before an error is discovered. That is a significant time and money waste.
Errors ultimately increase the cost of printing, which will eventually be passed on to the customer. At HUIDA, we work hard to prevent that by closely adhering to our pre-flight guidelines. What specific issues do we avoid, though?
Problems Pre-Flighting Addresses
Checking whether there is paper in the tray is usually the extent of your checklist before printing at home. You might quickly check your ink supply. But there are a lot more factors to take into account at a commercial printer because of the sophisticated equipment and procedures.
Every step of the procedure represents a potential point of failure. We use pre-flighting to make sure there are no mistakes made during printing.
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File Printer Compatibility
Did you know that not all files can be printed on all printers, while we're on the subject of printers? Even though PDF files are the most often used ones in print today, compatibility must be carefully considered when creating them. A raster-image processor, or RIP, must process the file you give to be printed.
Some RIPs can be picky when it comes to certain printers and PDF versions, and they don't always accept all of their features. We always make sure that the files we get from the outside are converted into an appropriate format because sending a faulty PDF can lead to incorrect prints.
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Missing Resources
Our pre-press team assembles files from a variety of assets or photographs. Mistakes can still happen even though we retain all of our assets on a single server to prevent lost files or corruption.
Let's say a customer asked for a page 4 graphic adjustment for their brochure. We proceed with the update, but afterward, the server has a problem, forcing us to restore from a backup. That backup could be related to the previous image, which has since been removed.
Without the pre-flight checklist, an operator might not identify this issue while hastily scanning the job to deliver it to the printer. Finding problems like these is made simpler by keeping a track of changes to the work.
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Font Mistakes
Another problematic component is fonts. Every time we have to work in a language other than English, this is particularly true. Our program might not natively support the special characters or symbols that are frequently seen in other languages but that we do not use.
We must make certain that the font files are accessible on the computer producing the final PDF for printing. Every system that uses the layout files must have fonts installed. If you don't choose good fonts, your printout may appear to be the ramblings of a subpar computer program.
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Area Colors
Sometimes it's critical to emphasize a certain hue in printing. In order to accomplish this and guarantee its consistency and quality, a printer will make a pass across the paper printed in only that one color. They are referred to as spot colors.
It is crucial for us to confirm that the document's settings are accurate if your document makes use of spot colors. Many designs start off with spot colors but later convert them to the four print colors of CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black).
Making changes to the printers themselves may be necessary if we use spot colors. For instance, spot inks might need to be set up. Nevertheless, spot color is the one thing that truly makes your color iconic.
Pre-Flighting a Document
It's actually pretty simple for you to perform your own pre-flighting on a typical printer. The majority of documents should be created in Adobe InDesign, which provides features to aid in finding potential mistakes. To begin, simply open a document in InDesign.
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Adobe Pre-Flight
Navigate to the Window menu and select Output. Preflight can then be chosen from the drop-down menu. If there are any problems with your paper, this will inform you of them and point out where they are.
The Preflight scanner from Adobe looks for font issues, missing files, and overflowing text. If you have assets close to or beyond the cut marks, it may also advise shifting items that could be omitted from prints.
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Performing Printer Checks
Check your printer once you're convinced that your document is ready to print. Make sure you have enough ink for the work and that the paper is loaded properly. You might wish to perform some maintenance on the printer if you haven't used it in a while.
For instance, you can use the head cleaning tool to clean the print heads of part of the debris and dried ink. To ensure that no bands or errant lines show up in your print, you can also realign the print. To guarantee the best outcomes, carry out this maintenance frequently.
When you're ready, export your PDF in InDesign and print it out.
We have seen it all here at HUIDA. We are skilled at navigating the minefield that is printing. No matter how big or complicated your job is, we can complete it. If you're interested in having a qualified print operator assess your needs. We are prepared to bring your vision to life. Pre-flighting is one of the many steps we'll handle for you so you can concentrate on what really matters: your business.