System information

6. Working with Certified PDF documents
6.1 PDF workflow concept
Certified PDF is a PDF workflow concept developed by Enfocus based on customer requests and
feedback from industry experts. The Certified PDF concept has been designed to address three
fundamental issues faced by the majority of users implementing a PDF workflow:
• How to guarantee that a PDF document was successfully preflighted with a specific Preflight
Profile.
• How to maintain consistency between the source document(s) and the PDF document when
(minor) changes can be applied to the PDF document throughout the workflow.
• How to minimize risk and responsibility when changing a customer's PDF document before
final output.
About Certified PDF
PDF workflow concept
Certified PDF is a PDF workflow concept developed by Enfocus based on customer requests and
feedback from industry experts. The Certified PDF concept has been designed to address three
fundamental issues faced by the majority of users implementing a PDF workflow:
• How to guarantee that a PDF document was successfully preflighted with a specific Preflight
Profile.
• How to maintain consistency between the source document(s) and the PDF document when
(minor) changes can be applied to the PDF document throughout the workflow.
• How to minimize risk and responsibility when changing a customer's PDF document before
final output.
Guaranteed preflighting
Preflighting issues
“Preflighting” is the process of checking a PDF document against various criteria to ensure that
the PDF document meets all the requirements for output or publication. Typically, the criteria vary
depending on the output or publishing process. A set of criteria matching the requirements of a
particular process is called a “Preflight Profile”.
PitStop Pro, for example, allows you to create a Preflight Profile that checks your PDF document
against various criteria, such as color and font usage. Moreover, you can use PitStop Pro to actually
fix detected problems in your PDF documents.
Ideally, a PDF document should be preflighted at an early stage in a workflow, i.e. as soon as it
has been created. This is particularly true if the PDF document will move from the PDF document
provider, who created the PDF document, to the PDF document recipient, for example a publishing
or printing department. Detecting problems in the PDF document before the file leaves the PDF
document provider saves time (and money). Even more so, when the PDF file is sent to a different
physical location.
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Enfocus PitStop Pro