Online Preflight services

[rchasexji]

I'm reaching out to anyone that has used Online Preflight services. I'm looking for one to check files for my wife's Designer business. I've researched Vicki Solutions and Sipressa. Any feedback regarding these two Online Preflight services - and any other ones - would be appreciated.

 

[Tim-Ellis]

Hello,

Acrobat DC is very affordable on creative cloud if you don't already have it. The preflight tools are pretty good.

I just had a quick look at the Sipressa website. Looks like grammar and spellcheck is not included.


Pre-pressa, our online PDF preflight service is built up to uplaod,preflight, fix and soort files directly to your FTP.

 

[WiseGuy]

You could also look at Enfocus Connect YOU – it's your own personal PDF automation tool.

It allows you pre-set your settings for PDF creation and PDF Preflight (using its built-in PitStop) into a custom print driver you can use over and over again to ensure PDF consistency and quality. For $150 it's a one time investment and you have a tool you can use as much as you need.

Just an alternative to consider.

Michael Reiher
Connect Product Manager
Enfocus

 

[[email protected]]

Preflighting files covers such a large topic. Are you looking for simple stuff, like image colors, resolution, are fonts embedded, etc, which without a doubt is important, or are you expecting it to look further into the supplied PDF? AS mentioned earlier, for simple preflight stuff Acrobat works as well as any other.
If however, you want to capture additional info like page sizes, # of pages, Trim, Media and bleed box info, or separations in the PDF (and even if setup with standard blend color spaces then a more robust toolkit is needed. All this boils down to what info are you looking for, how do you want to be presented the info, and what do you do with it when you have it. Using softproof tools to preflight a file seems overkill, manual, and may not gie you what you are looking for

 

[Ultimate]

Preflighting PDF can be tricky (what do you want to check and which errors can be costly in your shop?) and at 199, EUR for 100 PDF per month, it comes down to 2 EUR per PDF (or is it per page?) The other consideration is Internet bandwidth and time as to do it online, you need to upload your PDFs and then, download the corrected ones (which had issues). Perhaps you should look at the various PDF preflight solutions out there, using a local (on your computer) licensed solution.

 

[mattbeals]

There is a technical preflight, like what the automated tools provide. They tell you about color spaces, image resolution, bleeds (to a certain degree), fonts, etc. Then there is the mechanical preflight. That being is it actually printable the way it is currently constructed. Ghosting, panel widths, folds, crossovers, etc. The technical aspect can be done well with any of the tools mentioned. But that's only half of what's needed. No matter what anyone tells you, there is always a mechanical preflight that occurs whether it is in a formalized process or not. Humans always evaluate the art before committing it to press. That type of preflight is very specific it to the particular job and requires a broad knowledge. For that, best to ask a lot of questions about requirements and check them off one a time. Then use the tools mentioned to finish off the preflight.

 

[michaelejahn]

Humans always evaluate the art before committing it to press.

Not always true. We have quite a few PressWise customers who offer uploading to a template that then is paginate / imposed into a press sheet then printed fully unattended.