Section 66. About Preflighting

66. About Preflighting

If you plan on having your PDF document printed commercially, you should be sure to preflight it. Preflighting is the process of checking your document against a list of user -defined rules. Preflighting lets you verify that your PDF document contains all the features, fonts, and formatting you want and none that you do not. It analyzes a document to ensure that it is ready to be printed based on predefined settings for various output processes, a settings file you get from your print professional, or custom settings you define.

For example, a preflight profile called Newspaper Ads verifies whether a PDF file can be processed as a display ad for a newspaper. Another preflight profile, Digital Press (B/W) , verifies whether a PDF file can be processed on a digital press allowing only black and white.

Traditionally, preflighting was something you did to your source document before converting it to PDF and sending it to a commercial printer. With Acrobat 6 Professional, preflighting became a feature of Acrobat, allowing you to preflight documents from a variety of sources consistently and efficiently .

In addition to approximately 50 preset profiles, Acrobat also has the capability to import and export preflight profiles. This allows you to receive a profile from your print professional (via its website, email, or disk), import it into Acrobat, and use it to preflight your document to ensure it will print correctly.