Preflighting Your Document

Now that your printers are set up, you can use InDesign's printing and preprinting checkup tools. The Preflight tool that's part of InDesign will examine your document for any issues of concern and give you a report on what may need to be fixed.

You might wonder why you need a preflight tool to check for things such as missing fonts and images when InDesign will list any missing fonts and graphics when you open a document. The answer is that sometimes fonts and graphics files could be moved after you've opened a file, in which case you wouldn't get the alerts from InDesign. This is more likely to happen if you're working with files and fonts on a network disk, rather than with local fonts and graphics. Preflighting also checks for other problematic issues, such as the use of RGB files and TrueType fonts.

Before you run the preflight tool, you may want to set up your printer output so the tool can accurately check your document's setup in anticipation of, for example, whether you plan to output color separations or spot colors. To do that, you need to go to the Print dialog box, set your output settings, use Save Preset, provide a name in the Save Preset dialog box and click OK, and then click Cancel to put them into effect without actually printing the document.

Cross-Reference ‚  

Selecting your output settings is covered in detail in Chapter 31.

Tip ‚  

If you're working with the InDesign Books feature (see Chapter 9), you can preflight the book's chapters from an open book's pane, using the Preflight Book option in its palette menu. (If one or more documents in the book are selected in the pane, the menu option will change to Preflight Selected Documents.) The options are the same as for preflighting individual documents.

Running the Preflight tool is easy. Choose File ‚ Preflight, or press Shift+Option+ z +F or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F. In a few seconds, you'll get a dialog box that shows the status of your document. Here's a walkthrough of what the six panes in the Preflight dialog box do:

• The Summary pane (shown in Figure 30-3) shows you a summary of alerts. If your document has layers, you can select or deselect the Show Data for Hidden Layers option. If selected, layers that won't print will be analyzed for font, image, and other issues ‚ check this option only if the person receiving your document plans on printing hidden layers (for example, in a French-and-English document, you may have hidden the French layer for proofing but still want it checked, since the service bureau will be instructed to print the document twice ‚ once with the English layer on and the French layer off, and once with the English layer off and the French layer on).

  
  Figure 30-3: The Summary pane.

  Tip ‚  

  In a complex document with lots of graphics and fonts, you may want to select the Show Problems Only option in the Fonts pane and in the Links and Images pane. If selected, this option will display only elements flagged by the preflight tool in that pane.

• The Fonts pane (shown in Figure 30-4) shows the type (Type 1 PostScript, OpenType, or TrueType) of each font, so you can spot any TrueType fonts before they go to your service bureau. (TrueType fonts usually don't print easily on imagesetters , so use a program like Pyrus FontLab or Macromedia Fontographer to translate them to PostScript instead.) It will also show if any fonts are missing from your system.

  
  Figure 30-4: The Fonts pane.

• The Links and Images pane (shown in Figure 30-5) shows whether any graphics files are missing or if the original image has been modified since you placed it in your layout. You can use the Relink button to correct any such bad links one at a time, or Repair All to have InDesign prompt you in turn for each missing or modified file. The pane also shows whether a color profile is embedded in your graphics, in case files that should have them don't or in case a file that should not have an embedded profile does. It also shows an alert if you use RGB images; although such images will print or color-separate, InDesign provides the warning because it's usually better to convert such images to CMYK in an image editor or illustration program so you control the final appearance, rather than rely on InDesign or the output device to do the translation.

  
  Figure 30-5: The Links and Images pane.

• The Colors and Inks pane (shown in Figure 30-6) shows what color inks will be used in the output (if you are printing color separations, these correspond to the color plates that will eventually be used to print the document on a printing press). You can't modify anything here; it's simply for informational purposes.

  
  Figure 30-6: The Colors and Inks pane.

• The Print Settings pane (shown in Figure 30-7) shows how the document is configured to print in the Print dialog box. That's why configuring the output settings, as described earlier, before preflighting your document is key.

  
  Figure 30-7: The Print Settings pane.

• The External Plug-ins pane (shown in Figure 30-8) shows any plug-in programs required to output the file. Some third-party plug-ins make changes to the InDesign document that require the same plug-in to be installed at each computer that opens the file. This dialog box alerts you if you have such a dependency.

  
  Figure 30-8: The External Plug-Ins pane.

You can create a report of the preflight information by clicking the Report button. It generates a text file containing the information from the Preflight dialog box's panes, which you can give to your service bureau to check its settings and files against.

You can also click the Package button to gather all related fonts and files into one folder for delivery to a service bureau or other outside printing agency. The next section describes this option in more detail.

Click Cancel to exit the Preflight dialog box and go back to your document.