User guide

Table Of Contents

Chapter 3: Preflighting PDF documents46

Preflighting

Preflighting Defined

Preflighting is a term derived from the airline

industry. The pilot has the responsibility to deter-

mine the airworthiness of the aircraft before

take-off. This means that he or she has to perform

a number of checks prior to each flight.

Preflighting PDF documents basically means the

same thing: the “pilot in command”, i.e. the per-

son who creates or processes a PDF document, has

to make sure that the document is “airworthy”, or

rather, “outputworthy”, before delivering it.

“Outputworthy” means that the PDF document is

“fit for use”, for example:

• That a PDF document to be printed on a

four-color offset press contains only CMYK

colors and that all the necessary fonts are

included

• That a PDF document intended for online

viewing contains only RGB colors

Moreover, any property of a PDF document which

does not meet the requirements of the Preflight

Profile can be reported as a “problem” and some of

them can be fixed in the same process.

Preflighting Mechanism

How exactly does preflighting work in an Enfocus

PDF Queue? The preflight stage in the Certified PDF

workflow typically goes like this:

1 The PDF document is submitted to a preflight

check against a Preflight Profile.

2 A number of problems may be detected and

some of those may be fixed automatically.

3 The detected and fixed problems are listed in

a preflight report.

The next step in the workflow is the review stage.

This is where you may take a look at the preflight

report and visually inspect the PDF document.