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Acrobat flightcheck1/11/2024 PDF/X files identify themselves in either the file info or the metadata. In principle, if printers ask for the appropriate PDF/X and customers supply them, then there’s little need for pre-flighting. Adobe Illustrator CC, InDesign CC 2015 and QuarkXPress 2015 layout programs can output PDF/X-1, X-3 and X-4, for instance and they report it if they can’t verify the files due to their content. Programs that can output PDF/X usually have a way to verify the content as they work, and refuse to create a file if the contents are out of specification. PDF/X-4 extends this to support colour-managed CMYK, grey, RGB or spot colour data, as well as PDF transparency and optional content. PDF-X-3 can handle CMYK, spot, calibrated (managed) RGB and CIELAB, wit ICC profile. The first of these, currently most widely used as PDF/X-1a:2003, uses the PDF 1.4 format and basically ensures that all colours are converted to CMYK, that all the fonts are embedded in the file, and that image resolutions are at least 300dpi, without over-compression. The most commonly used today are PDF/X-1 and X-3 or 4. Since 2001 it has been possible to create PDFs that conform to a narrow “subset” of specifications that practically guarantee they’ll print properly – this is called “blind exchange.” These are the various flavours of PDF/X. Here Acrobat Pro has failed the verification of a PDF/X-4 conversion. You may also see bitmap formats such as TIFF or JPEG for some types of image. You still see vector formats such as AI (Illustrator native) CDR (CorelDraw native) and EPS (an output option for many sign programs). PDF is now the most common file delivery format, although in wide format it’s not universal. Other common problems are missing fonts, spot colours instead of CMYK values, RGB instead of CMYK, unprintable hairlines, transparency problems, drop shadows not appearing as they should, and layer orders going wrong. ![]() Competition and price pressure makes them rethink that I think.”ĭavid Dilling, managing director of pre-flight developer Markzware explains: “Obviously, the larger the printer, the costlier the error. It's pretty much all manual and job-by-job. ![]() But I also think the reason it looks like a big trend right now is because in that market you haven't had much of that going on over the last ten years. “Standardisation and preflight and automation are becoming more important in that market. Suppliers of pre-flighting report that wide format and packaging are their fastest-growing sales areas, though that could be because general commercial and publishing markets are now pretty mature.Īccording to David van Driessche, chief technical officer of Four Pees, a Belgium based developer and distributor of pre-press workflow systems: “Large format is more and more important for us - we see it with callas pdfToolbox, we see it with tFlow Approval – we see some of those aspects with the Creative Edge 3D visualisation tools. Large format printers are therefore increasingly using pre-flight programs that can automatically pick up content or format problems before they screw up anything expensive. Letting mistakes and bad files get through to print is obviously expensive and leads to issues of who pays - customer or (sadly often) the printer who doesn’t want to lose further business by kicking up a fuss. ![]() This gave the opportunity to query it with the customer, or if the solution was obvious the pre-press operators would usually fix it.Īs wide format digital printers increasingly follow commercial printers down the automated workflow paths, it’s technically feasible for a customer file received by a printing company to be processed completely automatically to the point where the first time it’s seen by human eyes is as it emerges from an inkjet printer. In the good old days, customer jobs submitted for print would go through so many human-overseen stages at the camera, plate and screen stages that any problems would be noticed early on. Printers know, at least in theory, that powerful preflight checking software will increase production efficiency in the workflow.
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