Okay, here's the confession, I NEVER do preflight on PDFs.
Why not? I don't know why it's needed. "Really?" I can hear y'all saying.

Really.
I send my files to the RIP and check that it is kosher, if not, I go back to the original file and fix it in Illustrator.

I know that this isn't the way to do things, but I'm pretty much self taught in Prepress, but still seem to manage to get  things out. I've been slow enough to read through much of the forum here, and preflight keeps coming up.

So educate me, tease me, or ignore me, I appreciate any feed back.

Like what do I do with this info I can't decipher?
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/tconley/Desktop/preflight%20capture.jpg


Ah CRAP!!! I don't even know how to attach a freaking picture here!

I'm a believer in Preflighting a lot of things (sometimes it's not necessary, but you never know, depends on who/what made the PDF).
From the looks of that report, you appear to be checking a lot of stuff and have it report back as an error, or something.
What you probably need is to set the Preflight to show info on all the images as to the minimum/maximum acceptable res, color space (cmyk/rgb),
spot colors and the like. I usually make my own Preflight profile to check for things that are relevant to my workflow.

Which preflight profile did you get that report from and what version of Acobat you using?

I don't run the Acrobat preflight. I just do a visual "glance" at every page in Acrobat. Prinergy runs preflight and makes a report. If anything goes wrong with a page I go back and run either Pitstop or Acrobat preflight and see if it gives any clue to the problem.

I running version 8.2.

I usually let the RIP tell me if there is a problem too. I try to anticipate the issue while compositing the art, I do much of my imposition in Illustrator, since the RIP is limited to only 2up impo. So much of my "preflight" is done in Illustrator as well.

But never having worked with a real pro, I need to start my own self evaluation of what why and how.
I figure there are a thousand things I could be doing better, I'm not happy with a "It works, why bother changing" attitude.

I will explore the settings and see what makes sense, and what i will have questions on. Thanks for taking it easy on me!

Quote from: Grimace on May 21, 2010, 10:42:02 AMI running version 8.2.

I usually let the RIP tell me if there is a problem too. I try to anticipate the issue while compositing the art, I do much of my imposition in Illustrator, since the RIP is limited to only 2up impo. So much of my "preflight" is done in Illustrator as well.

But never having worked with a real pro, I need to start my own self evaluation of what why and how.
I figure there are a thousand things I could be doing better, I'm not happy with a "It works, why bother changing" attitude.

I will explore the settings and see what makes sense, and what i will have questions on. Thanks for taking it easy on me!

So these PDF's you are editing with Illustrator...was the art created in Illustrator and saved as a PDF or are you opening PDF's created in other applications in Illustrator?

Quote from: Grimace on May 21, 2010, 10:42:02 AMThanks for taking it easy on me!

for now anyway...

 :evil:

PS. Acro 8 is not one of Adobe's better versions, most guys here either use 7 or 9 as their version of choice, since 8 is kinda sucky.

Call me and we can go through a few basics of Acrobat's preflight.

The files are mostly PDFs saved from Illustrator. We then email a proof to the customer for them to approve.
Much of what I do is create forms or taylor pre-existing forms, such as dropping in logos or doing custom cover for standard product we sell.

So, the customer is usually Mary the receptionist that has been asked to send the company logo to us. Scans of business cards, Word or Excel files, fax, etc....
Those jobs require that i take the customers, "idea" and fine tune it (read-create from scratch) for them.
Some customers will use design firms to do the art for them, those are usually fine, and art will be given to us in whatever format we ask for, usually PDF. Our custom order dept can better filter and charge prepress time if they can preview the art, so PDF works best for us. Or multiple formats of the same file will come in if created by designer.

Since the PDF proof is usually the last version of the art, I either shoot those to a 2up RIP, or if we need to put it on the large press, i impose the whole thing in Illustrator.

Side note- Having the job completely imposed in Illustrator allows me to output all the film I need from the same file, and makes stripping easier to piece together. Imposing say, two 2up files at RIP and then stripping can be a pain in the ass if the press sheet template wasn't drawn up well.

Quote from: mattbeals on May 21, 2010, 11:43:01 AMCall me and we can go through a few basics of Acrobat's preflight.

I noticed you local to me Matt, I may try to give you a call, it's difficult for me to talk on the phone here, due to proximity to noise/interruptions, etc. I will try to go over the preflight area a bit prior to any call, so I'm a little more up to speed.
Thanks for the offer!

Prinergy is my preflight here but even with my settings rarely do I get through a day without it flagging something. About 80% of the time it's a false flag but take a quick look and decide if I kick it back or think it's "good enough". Only thing I have it set to abort on is font issues.