After you've finished designing and assembling your publication, and you've delivered your files and proof printouts to your printing service, a whole new sequence of work begins on your publication. Before printing your publication, your printing professional will inspect your files for potential technical problems. This process is known as "preflighting" in the printing industry.

The best thing you can do to ensure that your print job comes out looking great, on time, and within budget is to talk to your printing professional before you deliver your files. Ask about prepress tasks, proper settings, and file formats for your publication.

Who's Responsible for Preflight Tasks?

Most printing professionals prefer to do their own troubleshooting, including performing preflight tasks. You will be responsible for doing some prep work at home, however, such as printing your publication on a desktop printer and marking the page elements that will bleed off the edge of the paper. Most printing services have a preflight checklist that you can use to check the completeness and quality of your files before you hand them off.

If you want to deliver PostScript files instead of Publisher files, you will be responsible for completing the preflight work yourself.

What's Included in a Preflight Check?

Verify fonts   The most common type of problem printing professionals face involves missing fonts. If you use a font in your publication that your printing service does not have on their computers, your text will print incorrectly. In fact, sometimes there are several different versions of a font, or different fonts with the same name, all of which print differently. For these reasons, most printing professionals prefer that you make copies of your font files and include them with your handoff. This way, they can install the same versions of fonts that you used in your publication.

Verify and, if necessary, edit linked graphics   Many times graphics files are overly complex or have internal problems that prevent them from printing correctly. The printing professional may want to open a graphic file in his or her favorite program to modify it. Linking your graphics files and including them with your publication enables your printing professional to fix any graphics-related problems.

Verify colors   Professionally printed publications must be set up using the CMYK color model. If the color model is set incorrectly, the printing professional will convert the colors in your publication and make color corrections if necessary.

If you create a color publication, the printing service will separate the colors so that your publication will be produced as a series of films, one sheet of film for each ink color. Each additional sheet increases the total price of your print job. Your printing professional will make sure that your colors are set up correctly and that no unnecessary extra colors are used.

Verify page size and layout   The page size of your publication file should be appropriate to the size of the finished piece. For example, if the finished size of your brochure is 8.5" x 11", the text and artwork in your file should cover an 8.5" x 11" area. Your printing professional will check to make sure that:

• Page and panel dimensions are correct.
• Objects in your publication are positioned properly in relation to page size.
• Bleeds are set up correctly.
• Your publication is set up in the proper page sequence.
• Necessary printer's marks have room to print.

Set or fix trapping   If your publication will be color separated, the printing service may need to "trap" it. Because printing presses operate at high speed and ink is laid down in separate layers, it's easy for the ink layers to be slightly misaligned with each other. Trapping prevents unwanted gaps between different colors by adjusting the size of the objects on the different layers of ink so that they overlap slightly around the edges. Your printing professional will set traps for certain elements in your publication. Or, if you decide to trap your publication yourself, the printing professional will check existing trap settings, and fix any trap settings that are incorrect.

Verify print settings   Your printing service will specify advanced publication options and output device options for the specific printer that your publication will print on. Publication options include settings for linked graphics, font substitution, printer's marks, bleeds, and color-matching options. Device options include settings for film orientation and output, resolution, and per-plate settings for screen frequency and angles.

Is It Worth It?

These tasks are time consuming and may seem daunting. Your printing professional, however, is in the business of providing you with professional-looking publications within your timeframe and budget. Working together on the preflight inspection is one key to achieving satisfaction with the final printed publication.