The Associated Press Takes Preflighting Online

Think you’ve got preflighting headaches? AP AdSEND — the digital advertising delivery service of The Associated Press — handles some 1.6 million printed advertisements yearly. These days the process is moving along more smoothly, however, now that the company has found a preflighting solution that fit its requirements.

Pick up any Sunday paper, and chances are good — very good — that you’ll see an advertisement reserved, proofed, and delivered through AP AdSEND. From its humble beginnings in 1994, today AdSEND serves up ads to more than 3,000 newspapers, advertising agencies, and magazine clients.

“We see ourselves as a virtual online conference table where everyone with a piece of the advertising pie can come to do their portion of business,” said Jim Gerberich, director of operations for Business Development at AdSEND, headquartered in New York with regional offices in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Chicago.

Much of that business revolves around proofing and preflighting ads, to ensure they don’t stop the presses when delivered to client publications.

“Today, ad creation is taken up to the last minute. And when you’re working right up to deadline, the chance for error increases dramatically,” said Gerberich. Not surprisingly, AdSEND has been searching for years for a preflight solution that would help clients proof ads, spot printing problems, and detect compatibility issues. But Gerberich passed on most preflight solutions because they would have required AdSEND to distribute desktop software to its many client locations, and then to maintain and support that software. “With the number of clients we have, the idea was simply cost prohibitive,” said Gerberich.

Enter Preflight Online
Last year Gerberich at last found a solution that meets his needs: Preflight Online, from the Extensis Products Group (creativepro.com’s sister company under the ImageX.com umbrella). Preflight Online is a proprietary online service that allows PDF and QuarkXPress documents to be checked for dozens of problems right on a customer’s computer, without the need to install and maintain any special desktop applications. The service is available on subscription basis. (A Limited Edition service is available as a free e-service of creativepro.com.)

At AdSEND, Gerberich has integrated Preflight Online into AP AdSEND’s proofing service, named AdPROOF. “Using AdPROOF, an advertiser can quickly send a proof to multiple locations where selected recipients, like store managers and vendors, can review it and respond with comments and suggestions,” said Gerberich.

Designed for prepress and print service providers, Preflight Online also allows users to check for errors and deliver press-ready files at very low cost. The service provides full support for Adobe PDF and QuarkXPress 4.x, with an emphasis on potential problem areas that have historically plagued professional output, including image resolution, spot colors, and embedded fonts.

“The whole idea is to catch errors as far upstream as possible, before the client sends a file to 50 publications and you have 50 problems instead of just one,” said Gerberich.

Preflight from Anywhere
Preflight Online is not the only online preflighting solution available. MarkzNet from Markzware of Santa Ana, Calif., is a full-featured Web-based preflighting tool that allows users to check digital files against a customized set of specific ground controls defined by the receiving side, such as a prepress house or printer. The program automatically alerts the sender of any corrections that need to be made, preventing glitches and incompatibility problems that can shut down a printing job and run up printing costs.

Like MarkzNet, Extensis’ Preflight Online works on both Mac and Windows, with both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. And because the inspection of documents always takes place on the user’s computer, documents are completely secure and bandwidth is not a major concern: Preflight Online works by downloading a 400K browser plug-in that contains the preflighting engine. The results of the inspection are sent back to the Preflight Online server where an HTML page is generated containing an analysis of any problems found, including a detailed guide for correcting each problem.

“It’s automated and very quick. A customer presses one button in their browser and gets preflight info back almost immediately. They can preflight a file without even knowing they’re using a preflighting program.”

Because the service is self-configuring and performs inspection on local hard drives, Preflight Online also relieves Gerberich of the worry of client upgrades and support. When the Preflight Online Web server is updated, new features and file format support become instantly available to all clients. “That’s very important to us, because we don’t want to have to worry about what version of software everyone has.”

At the same time, subscribers can create unlimited custom preflighting profiles and set parameters tailored to custom workflows. Presets can be chosen, for example, for print to a laser/inkjet printer or output on a traditional press.

Different Strokes
Of course, some desktop preflighting tools remain very popular, including PitStop Professional, from Enfocus Software, which adds text and object editing to a robust set of preflighting tools. There’s also Enfocus’s new Certify PDF, a high-level desktop app that adds an edit log to each PDF file for tracking every change made to the file and by whom. The log can be viewed at any time in the workflow.

Markzware’s desktop preflighting app, Flightcheck, is designed to automatically check for more than 150 potential problems, and Extensis Preflight Pro 2.1 adds a host of features, including concise reports, file compression, and a Pilot feature that takes you directly to each problem and suggests intelligent solutions.

But with his far-flung client base, Gerberich is sold on the benefits of Web-based preflighting.

Preflight Online allows users to batch process multiple files; create detailed reports in plain English, and compress all necessary files into a single archive for easy transmission, including all the fonts and images needed to ensure correct output. This collection feature can be used even with all preflighting functions turned off.

“It’s been a tremendous value add for our customers. The initial feedback has been fantastic. Our clients work with volumes and volumes of work and they’re always looking to automate any step of the process. If we can reduce problems or even keystrokes, it’s a great advantage to offer.”

“Preflight Online has helped us dramatically increase the amount of successful files that go through our office,” said Gerberich.

The service has also helped AdSEND cut down on help-desk expenditures and allows Gerberich to generate usage statistics by user and volume. All of this while simultaneously cutting down on files that require human intervention at press time and helping to educate AdSEND customers about typical problems so that they might be avoided in the future.

“Preflight Online has helped us dramatically increase the amount of successful files that go through our office,” said Gerberich.

The initial implementation has been so successful that Gerberich and team are looking at ways to make the service available to more of its customers.

“We don’t have 100 percent of our ad traffic being preflighted just yet, but I’d love it if we did.”