Just my two cents, there are many ways to skin a cat, it's just finding what suits you and your business best. The reporting is important as well, we do have a low res annotated PDF report which the CSR can email back to the customer, this really helps communication as the customer can easily see where the problem elements are, and as it works with the free Acrobat reader anyone can open it and see the issues.

I've seen this type of solution at several printers and it really speeds up feedback to customers and ensures that files are workable once they enter prepress. Plus it's not a manual process to check the file, it's a drag and drop and then pick up the result when it's ready. The way I would see it working is as follows.Įach team member has a hotfolder on their desktop, they drop files into it, these get preflighted and the Preflight reports come back into an output folder also mounted on their desktop, all the ok ones are good to go, the error ones they can open in (free) Acrobat reader and see the issues.īenefits are you only need to configure the system in one place and not run around everyone's desktop managing individual applications, and it also means that people can't fiddle and change things without your knowledge. It's very straightforwardĪlso something to think about, depending on how many CSR's/Sales you want involved it could be very cost effective to go to a server based solution not a desktop one. You can make it as simple or as detailed as you want. This can be done easily in PitStop you just need to make a preflight check with fixes turned off, and just check for the things you deem important. You want to be sure that the file is in a reasonable shape before it goes into prepress and get back to customers quickly if there are any showstopper issues. resolution, fonts embedded, maybe RGB and a few other things. Speaking from an Enfocus perspective this is a pretty normal thing, I guess what you are looking for is a simple vanilla 'are the important things ok' check for sales and CSR's. I have no affiliation with the following product, nor have I used it - however it came to mind in the context of this discussion (a web based SAS product): This can be offered to your customers and may solve many issues before a PDF is even generated. By default the built in preflight of InDesign is very limited (missing fonts and links), however with a few tweaks one can create a custom preflight that is very useful. When the subject of preflighting comes up, the Ghent PDF Workgroup should probably be mentioned as well:īefore a PDF is even created, there are the live preflight tools of Adobe InDesign. If you have PDF Workflow software such as Kodak Prinergy, then you probably also have preflight/fix too.

Of course, Enfocus have other products such as Connect or InstantPDF in addition to Pitstop. Then you will have an idea of what other solutions can offer and you will be able to better compare products. Before investing in other solutions, see if what you have works and is productive. Acrobat Pro is a powerful tool that is often under utilised in many print shops.

Flightcheck indesign