Ensuring ready to print files

Book production is regularly delayed by up to six weeks and often this is as a result of printers receiving PDF files containing a myriad of errors and missing elements. This is related to a lack of awareness of commercial printing technology requirements. If the files are printed as they are, the books will be of poor quality. It is therefore recommended that PDF files are checked before sending them to the printer, to avoid back and forth with time and resource-consuming corrections. This process is called Preflight during which a tool/software is used to check for printing requirements in a file. BlueTree Group is currently offering Preflight services as well training on ready to print files and PDF Preflight.

Training offered to the content development teams includes:

Guidelines for book creation, including chromatic, color space and image comprehension. These guidelines are important as they reduce the prepress checking work and ease the files approval process before printing.
PDF Preflight. In this training the participants will learn more about Preflight, which is a process of checking whether the PDF files are suitable for use in print or any other purpose they have. Preflight ensure that a file matches the requirements to reproduce it correctly in print.

In the reading projects that BlueTree Group is involved in, we are running an inspection on the files provided by the content development team on behalf of the Client, to ensure that they meet the technical printing requirements. Checking files is essentially done to avoid complications in processing or during printing, since the earlier in the process the problems are detected, the easier and cheaper it is to fix them. There are several tools/software in the market that are used for Preflight such as Adobe Acrobat DC, Callas PDFToolbox, Enfocus PitStop and Markzware FlightCheck.