Design for print - Pre-flight

Pre-flighting is a term used in the printing industry to describe the process of confirming that the digital files required for the printing process are all present, valid, correctly formatted, and of the desired type. The term originates from the pre-flight checklists used by pilots. The term was first used in a presentation at the Color Connections conference in 1990 by consultant Chuck Weger.

Definition : 

The pre-flight process checks for:

• images and graphics embedded by the client have been provided and are available to the application
• fonts are accessible to the system
• fonts are not corrupt
• fonts are in a compatible format
• image files are of formats that the application can process
• image files are of the correct color format (some RIPs have problems processing RGB images, for example)
• image files are of the correct resolution
• required color profiles are included
• image files are not corrupt
• confirm that the page layout document size, margins, bleeds, marks and page information all fit within the constraints of the output device and match the client specifications
• confirm that the correct colour separations or ink plates are being output

Other, more advanced pre-flight steps might also include:

• removing non-printing data, such as non-printing objects, hidden objects, objects outside the printable area and objects on layers below
• flattening transparent objects into a single opaque object
• converting fonts to paths
• gathering embedded image and graphic files to one location accessible to the system
• compressing files into an archive format