FlightCheck
by Gail Allison, Graphic Designer, Breiten Concepts, Monrovia, CA
FlightCheck markets itself as the "Intelligent Preflight Software." It
is just that. This program is able to check all of your document files created in
QuarkXPress or PageMaker and informs you of potential problems. FlightCheck checks
your document's fonts, eps images, fonts embedded within your eps images, trapping,
colors (RGB, CMYK, and spot colors), resolutions and much more. This program will
then collect all of the necessary fonts and images used in your document and place
them into a special folder. This saves time, money and grief, the grief you feel
when your printer calls you and says, "We're missing a file."
Who might benefit from this program?
Naturally one would think of commercial printers. As a graphic designer for a
design, advertising, and marketing firm, I now run all my files through FlightCheck
before sending them to my service bureau. By doing this, I eliminate those dreaded
phone calls from printers, and expensive messenger services, because I have to send
another disk, and angry clients due to missed deadlines. I feel that designers, printers,
service bureaus, and anyone else who outputs files or uses an outside source to output
them will benefit by using FlightCheck.
FightCheck is extremely thorough. This program is also more reliable than using the
collect info option in QuarkXPress. When using FlightCheck with very large files
you must be patient. For example, the first time I ran a file through FlightCheck
the program had to inspect an eps file created in Freehand that I had copied and
pasted into Quark several times in order to create a pattern. FlightCheck had to
go in and inspect this eps file for each time that it was copied and pasted. Running
this program is worth the wait, whether your file is large or small.
FlightCheck is now a necessary tool I use before copying any file that I send out-of-house.
And in case my printer or service bureau does not have FlightCheck, I can include
with my disk a printout of my FlightCheck analysis. This will answer most questions
my printer may have about my document before even opening it.
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