Print Solutions Magazine, July 2003 -- The E-Files

Keep Track of Your Name

Have you ever visited a search engine and inputted your company's name or a competitor's name? You now can use Google Alert v.2.0 to find out what your competitors are up to. (Did any of them get good ink in a recent newspaper article?) Google Alert v.2.0 sends email notifications of new results that appear (complete with links) to users' routine searches.

Know About All The Web

For small businesses, the major search engines are important places to be listed because of their potential to generate much-needed online traffic. A relatively new major engine is All The Web (www.alltheweb.com), which allows users to search for news stories, pictures, video clips, MP3s and FTP files. People sometimes refer to All the Web as "FAST" or "FAST Search" because it used to be owned by a company called FAST.

More distributorships are providing commercial printing, promotional items and other projects that incorporate digital files, and ensuring the quality of those files can make or break project deadlines. Printing pros say the best way to deal with missing fonts, improper trapping and scaling, and other prepress problems is to prevent them from occurring in the first place.

That's easier said than done, even for seasoned designers who understand what to look for when preparing digital files for output to film or direct to plate. Projects often run into snags when senders and recipients have different hardware or software (or prepress skill levels), and some designers aren't familiar with converting files to PDF format.

Jobs submitted for print often include at least one error such as a missing font or an RGB image in a CMYK job. That can lead to the time-consuming process of sending files back and forth between print buyer and provider, with both parties believing the other is responsible for noticing and fixing errors.

The Value of Preflighting

"We work and live in confusing and complex times," says Kenneth Spears, publisher of CrossMedia, a Laguna Niguel, Calif.-based magazine for digital creators and print buyers who distribute their work across a variety of media. "This is especially true for those of us who are involved in graphic design, photography, illustration and the other dozen or so disciplines that make up the graphics world."

Prior to publishing CrossMedia, Spears served as production manager for three publications--Micro Publishing News, Digital Imaging and Print on Demand--and helped to design and print many books, magazines and large-format media. "The hardest part was when we were using multiple master fonts, and service bureaus were unsure of what to do with them," he says. "I can't count the number of calls I got at three in the morning from a technician saying, 'I can't get the fonts to work.' The multiple masters needed to be placed in the RIP as well as downloaded with the file into the RIP."

Spears praises the value of preflighting, especially because many projects now are converted to PDF format or are outputted direct to plate. "As we prepare our digital files, we take steps to make sure things such as missing fonts and images are included, fonts are with the files, colors are converted to CMYK, and trapping is correct," he says.

To accomplish this, Spears relies on more than just his eyeballs. He uses FLIGHTCHECK® preflighting software from Markzware Inc., a Santa Ana, Calif.-based company that caters to the graphic design, printing and publishing industries. (See "The File on Markzware Inc." above.) "Preflighting all aspects of digital files before PDFs are created increases the chance of error-free output," he says.

A Tool That's On the Mark

Preflighting software has existed since the 1980s, and Markzware introduced FLIGHTCHECK in 1995. The stand-alone software scans a variety of file types, including QuarkXPress™, PageMaker™, Multi-Ad Creator™, Illustrator™, Photoshop™, InDesign™, Freehand™ and CorelDRAW™, to notify users of more than 150 potential prepress problems. Prepress managers and graphic designers worldwide rely on FLIGHTCHECK, which has won awards from the International Digital Imaging Association and Electronic Publishing magazine, among others.

Many print providers and service bureaus say preflighting occurs too late in the workflow. Perhaps the main advantage of FLIGHTCHECK is it enables the process to begin sooner--before files leave designers' desktops. Designers benefit by correcting files on their own equipment, improving turnaround times and preventing possible charges from printers. Printers benefit by receiving print-ready files that reduce downtime.

Offering tools that benefit designers and printers is important to Patrick Marchese, Markzware's president. He has a printing industry background and was a graphic arts electronic media manager before launching Markzware in 1989. The company enjoyed its first major success in 1993, when it launched XState, a document management tool that groups documents into projects and tracks the amount

of time users spend on those projects. Later that year, the company introduced MarkzTools, which enables recovery of corrupt documents, and PM2Q, which allows document conversion from PageMaker to QuarkXPress. The Printing Industries Association Inc. of Southern California named Marchese as its Pioneer of the Year in 2001.

Markzware has launched several tools this year. In January, it released ID2Q, which converts InDesign files (versions 1.5 and 2.0) to QuarkXPress documents (versions 4.0 and higher). In May, the firm released Job2Print.com, an internet job delivery solution that enables graphic designers and end users to collect images and fonts, then send completed jobs via FTP to their print vendors. Job2Print.com performs 12 standard preflighting checks before reporting results on users' screens.

Darin Painter is managing editor of Print Solutions. Email him your comments at dpainter@PSDA.org.

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