Session 1 – Preflight Workflows and File Prep
Creating efficient preflight workflows for your clients
Adequate file preparation and preflighting requires significant participation by your customers. Getting them to accept and take ownership responsibility of preflighting and file preparation requires tact, sales, technical competence and patience. Properly designed preflight workflows developed with your customer in mind will provide the time needed to move work through your operation more efficiently, allowing everyone to focus their time and resources more effectively.
This session will outline the techniques needed to develop an efficient workflow plan with your customers to help both of you achieve maximum productivity. We’ll look at job submission methods (e.g. Instant PDF and Acrobat JDF) that include preflight and automatic file correction at the point of PDF creation. Then we’ll examine preflight tools built into specific design application software as well as third party tools that will turn preflight into a “formality” for you and your clients.
Topics include:
• Designing a best-practices preflight workflow
• Using InDesign’s built-in preflight
• Using PDF effectively in a preflighted workflow
• Specific preflight tools and methods
• Automated systems and how to maximize their usage
• Working with customers existing workflows and modifying them for maximum efficiency
• Transparency
• Color usage
• Font usage
• Imaging requirements
• Preflighting workflows and software
• Preflight options
• Recommended preflight “strategy”
• Job submission methods that provide preflight capability