Guaranteed preflighting

Preflighting issues

“Preflighting” is the process of checking a PDF document against various criteria to ensure that the PDF document meets all the requirements for output or publication. Typically, the criteria vary depending on the output or publishing process. A set of criteria matching the requirements of a particular process is called a “Preflight Profile”.

PitStop Pro, for example, allows you to create a Preflight Profile that checks your PDF document against various criteria, such as color and font usage. Moreover, you can use PitStop Pro to actually fix detected problems in your PDF documents.

Ideally, a PDF document should be preflighted at an early stage in a workflow, i.e. as soon as it has been created. This is particularly true if the PDF document will move from the PDF document provider, who created the PDF document, to the PDF document recipient, for example a publishing or printing department. Detecting problems in the PDF document before the file leaves the PDF document provider saves time (and money). Even more so, when the PDF file is sent to a different physical location.

Preflighting in a Certified PDF workflow

A Certified PDF workflow supports the preflight process by:

• Offering the PDF document provider a simple and streamlined way to preflight a PDF document with a Preflight Profile supplied by the PDF document recipient.
• Including the Preflight Profile and the corresponding Preflight Report in the PDF document. This way there can be no doubt about the preflight status of the PDF document.
• Offering a straightforward user interface that enables the recipient of the PDF document to verify that the document has been preflighted successfully with a profile he or she provided.

The above-mentioned features help to:

• Motivate the PDF document provider to actually preflight his or her PDF documents.
• Dramatically reduce the number of problems in files received from PDF document providers.