Live Preflight: InDesign tutorial 

tel: 07775 616160 | email: robert15@trainingstream.co.uk

Live Preflight in InDesign

Traditionally you would ‘preflight’ a document before you sent it to print to avoid costly errors and time consuming last minute fixes. InDesign provides a powerful and flexible live preflight panel that can flag errors as they occur. It is as important as ever to check a document for problems and errors and Live Preflight helps you get into the habit of checking for and dealing with errors – saving you time and money.

 

You can set up custom preflight profiles to suit the requirements of your particular workflow in order to meet specific requirements needed for final output. By switching on settings in the various panels of the Preflight Profiles dialog box you are specifying conditions that you want live preflight to check for and flag as errors that need to be fixed, or at least examined, before you proceed to final output, whether for print or digital / online distribution.

 

Outlined below are some of the options that InDesign can detect and flag.

 

Links

 

Links Missing or Modified

Inaccessible URL Links

OPI Links

 

Color

 

Transparency Blending Space Required – specify whether the Transparency Blending Space should be RGB or CMYK

Cyan, Magenta or Yellow Plates Not Allowed

Color Spaces and Modes Not Allowed – select from RGB, CMYK, Spot, LAB, Grey

Spot Color Setup – specify the number of spot colors allowed, and specify whether predefined spot colors must use LAB values or CMYK Equivalents

Overprinting Applied in InDesign

Overprinting Applied to White or [Paper] Color

[Registration] Applied

 

 

Images and Objects

 

Image Resolution – specify maximum and minimum resolution for color, greyscale and 1-bit images

Non-Proportional Scaling of Placed Object

Uses Transparency

Image ICC Profile – specify settings to flag whether profile settings may cause CMYK conversion and to flag any profile overrides

Layer Visibility Overrides

Minimum Stroke Weight – specify the minimum acceptable stroke weight

Interactive Elements – select which interactive elements to flag from Video, Audio, Interactive Object, Multi-State object, Button, Form, Incompatibility with Flash Player

Bleed/Trim Hazard – alert for objects placed too close to the page trim, either inside the trim or outside (too close to the edge of the page, or not far enough off the edge of the page to allow for an adequate bleed.)

Hidden Page Items

 

 

Text

 

Overset Text

Paragraph Style and Character Style Overrides

Font Missing

Glyph Missing

Dynamic Spelling Detects Errors

Font Types Not Allowed – specify fonts disallowed (see screenshot)

 

Non-Proportional Type Scaling

Minimum Type Size – specify minimum acceptable type size

Cross-References – identify unresolved or out of date Cross References

Conditional Text Indicators Will Print

Unresolved Caption Variable

 

 

Document

 

Page Size and Orientation – specify required page size and orientation

Number of Pages Required – specify number of pages required

Blank Pages

Bleed and Slug Setup

All Pages Must Use Same Size and Orientation

 

 

 

© robert shufflebotham 2014

---