1. Flightcheck

Having your service bureau run your job through a preflighting program can prevent errors from showing up in print, but each problem that crops up causes delays and may result in extra charges.

Check in beginning 24 hours and up to 45 minutes before your flight (90 minutes for international). FlightCheck is powerful and the price is reasonable. I have used InDesign's preflight utility, but it is bad, it is even unable to check EPS images and it checks very few details. FlightCheck is totally different. It works with many file types, including PDF files, Quark as well as InDesign, and checks lots of details.

Markzware’s FlightCheck Classic 4.2 can help you eliminate problems before you submit your job, saving you

time and money. Its Ground Controls palette lets you set up the rules by which the program will flag conditions as errors. FlightCheck scans your publication and then produces a detailed usage report, a window showing the problems it’s flagged, and a window that lets you step through and fix problems. When you’re done, the program can collect all your job’s elements and save them for transmission.

FlightCheck checks for everything from obvious oversights, such as missing fonts, to obscure problems, such as an out-of-range ink limit. And it supports all major page-layout and image-editing programs.

Macworld’s Buying Advice

FlightCheck Classic catches more potential problems and is more configurable than its main competitor, Extensis’s Preflight Pro, and it’s much more comprehensive than the preflighting utilities in the applications whose output it checks. If you need to deliver publications that will sail through your service bureau’s production chain, this is an indispensable tool.

Flightcheck