The term “preflight” comes from the aviation industry and refers to the checklist that pilots use to confirm that everything is ready for takeoff. In print publishing, when you preflight a publication you check the electronic file for potential printing-related problems, such as missing fonts or graphics or the use of color in a black-and-white publication.

In the past, preflight was generally performed immediately before a file was printed—which is not always the best time to find problems. The new Preflight panel in InDesign CS4 lets you preflight a document throughout its life span and identify potential printing problems as they occur. You have the option to use the default preflight settings, which warn you about overset text, missing and modified graphics, and missing fonts, or you can create custom preflight profiles that are appropriate for the publications you create.

      To turn on preflight:

1.  Choose Window > Output > Preflight to open the Preflight panel (Figure 94a).

Figure 94a In this example, a custom preflight profile named “CMYK Only” is selected. Two errors are reported: 1) The picture uses the RGB color space; and 2) The text frame contains overset text.

2.  Click the On check box. When a green check mark is displayed, preflight is enabled. By default, the [Basic] (Working) preflight profile is used.

If a document does not have any preflight problems, a green dot and “No errors” is displayed in the lower-left corner of the Preflight panel, as well as at the bottom left of the document window. If you violate any of the conditions of the current preflight profile, the green dot turns red and the number of errors is displayed. All errors are listed in the Preflight panel. If you select a specific problem, detailed information about the error is displayed in the Info area.

Creating custom preflight profiles

Although the default preflight profile [Basic] (working) warns you about the most common printing-related problems, you’ll probably want to create your own custom preflight profiles.

      To create a custom preflight profile:

1.  Choose Window > Output > Preflight to open the Preflight panel.

2.  Choose Define Profiles from the Preflight panel menu.

3.  In the Preflight Profiles dialog box (Figure 94b), click the New preflight profile button ( ), and then enter a name in the Profile Name field.

Figure 94b The “CMYK Only” preflight profile does not allow RGB, spot color, grayscale, and Lab colors. Importing a graphic or creating a color swatch that uses any of these color models will generate an error warning in the Preflight panel.

4.  Use the controls for Links, Color, Images and Objects, and so on to specify what you want to allow and exclude.

5.  Click OK to save the profile.

6.  If you want to use the profile you just created, select it from the Profile menu in the Preflight panel.

InDesign includes several features that let you preview and prepare documents before you print final versions or send them to a print service provider for high-resolution output. The Separations Preview panel (Window > Output > Separations Preview) is one of the most useful production tools for color publications. It lets you show or hide individual colors, display color values for objects and graphics, and show areas that exceed a specified maximum ink coverage.

      To preview color separations onscreen, open the Separations Preview panel (Figures 95a and 95b), and then choose Separations from the View menu. The color list in the panel includes process colors—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black—as well as any other spot colors in the Swatches panel regardless of whether you’ve used them.

Figure 95a The Separations Preview panel includes a list of process and spot colors, and lets you show and hide individual colors. In this example, the pointer is on the sweater of the person in the graphic. The values in the panel show the color makeup of the pixel that the pointer is on.

Figure 95b In this example, all colors in the Separations Preview panel are turned off except Black. Only objects that are black or contain a percentage of black are displayed on the document page.

The Separations Preview panel works as follows:

When it’s time to send a finished InDesign document to a print service provider, you need to gather all of the font and graphic files used in the document, as well as a copy of the InDesign file, into a single folder for easy transport. Fortunately, InDesign can do this file management work for you.

In addition to collecting font and graphic files, the Package command (File menu) scans a document for potential printing problems and warns you if it finds anything amiss. (See #94 for information about preflighting documents.)

      To package a document:

1.  Choose File > Package.

2.  The Summary pane of the Package dialog box displays information about the document’s Fonts, Links and Images, Colors and Inks, and External Plug-ins. Yellow warning triangles are displayed next to potential printing problems. The other panes display details. You may want to click Cancel and resolve the problems; however, if you decide to ignore them, click Package to display the Printing Instructions dialog box. You’ll be prompted to save the document if you’ve made changes since you last saved it.

3.  The information you enter into the various fields of the Printing Instructions dialog box is saved as a text file that’s included in the package. After you’ve entered the information you want to include, click Continue.

4.  In the Folder Name field of the Package Publication dialog box (Figure 96), enter a name for the folder into which files will be copied and specify the location of the folder.

Figure 96 The Package command creates a folder into which the files you specify in the Create Package Folder dialog box are copied. Send the package folder to your print service provider for final output.

5.  Use the check boxes at the bottom-left of the Package Publication dialog box to specify the files you want to include. You’ll probably want to check Copy Fonts (Except CJK) and Copy Linked Graphics, and you should check Update Graphic Links in Package so that the InDesign file copied into the package folder is linked to the graphic files that are copied to the package folder and not to the original files. (Linked graphics are placed in a folder called Links within the package folder; fonts are placed in a folder called Fonts.) Click Package to create the package folder and include the files you’ve chosen.

After you’ve packaged an InDesign document, you’ll probably want to compress the package folder and then e-mail the compressed file to your print service provider, upload the file to your provider’s FTP site, or copy the file onto a CD or portable drive for delivery to your provider. Package folders are also useful for storing and archiving InDesign documents and all of the files required to print them at the end of the production cycle.

At many publishing sites, publications in progress are exported as PDF documents for electronic markup and review, and finished publications are exported as PDF for final, high-resolution output. When it’s time to export an InDesign layout to PDF, you have many options for controlling the size and many other characteristics of the file. The choices you make when you export to PDF depend on how the PDF will be used. For example, if you want to distribute a PDF via e-mail to colleagues or clients for electronic review and markup using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, you should save a compact, low-resolution PDF that’s well suited for electronic distribution and review. If you intend to send a PDF file to a print service provider for high-resolution output, you should save a high-resolution file.

      To export a layout to PDF:

1.  Choose File > Export.

2.  In the Export dialog box, enter a name for the PDF file and choose the folder in which the file will be saved.

3.  Choose Adobe PDF from the Format menu (Mac OS) or Save as Type menu (Windows), and then click Save.

4.  In the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, you can simply choose a PDF preset in the Adobe PDF Preset menu, and then click Export, or you can choose a preset, customize the settings in the various panes of the Export Adobe PDF dialog box (Figure 97), and then click Export. If the document contains any missing fonts or any missing or modified graphics, alerts are displayed. You can ignore any alerts and continue export by clicking OK, or you can click Cancel to cancel export and return to the document. If you change a setting, “(modified)” is displayed to the right of the preset selected in the Adobe PDF Preset menu.

Figure 97 When you export an InDesign document to PDF, the settings you make in the panes of the Export Adobe PDF dialog box determine the characteristics of the PDF document and the size of the file that’s generated.

When you make changes in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, the new settings are saved with the application and used the next time you export a layout to PDF.

Sometimes, you may want to use InDesign pages, objects, or text in another application or in another InDesign document. For example, if you’ve created a magazine cover, you may want to use a reduced version of the layout in an advertisement for the magazine. Or you may want to include an image of the cover on a Web page. InDesign lets you export objects, text, pages, spreads, and documents in a variety of different file formats.

To export a selected object or multiple objects, selected text, or document pages, choose File > Export. The Export dialog box is displayed (Figure 98). The file formats displayed in the Save as type menu (Windows) or Format menu (Mac OS) and what you can export depend on what’s currently selected in the document: nothing, one or more objects, a text frame, or text.

Figure 98 The Export dialog box, showing the formats available when an object is selected. When a text frame is selected, the insertion point is blinking, or text is highlighted, the Format menu in the Export dialog box includes text file formats, such as Rich Text Format and Text Only, as well as graphic formats, such as EPS and JPEG.

The Save as type menu (Windows) and Format menu (Mac OS) in the Export dialog box offer the following choices:

While you can use InDesign to produce nonprinted documents, such as interactive multimedia PDFs, chances are you’ll print most of the documents you create. Whether you need to print proofs of a layout to an inkjet or laser printer or send a finished layout to a high-resolution printer, such as an imagesetter, you can use InDesign’s extensive printing controls to ensure that you get the results you want.

Before you print a document, it’s a good idea to preflight it (Window > Output > Preflight; see #94) to determine whether there are any potential printing problems and, if so, fix them. You should also make sure that the correct printer drivers and PostScript Printer Descriptions (PPDs) are installed on your computer. When you’re ready to print, choose File > Print.

To specify the printer, choose a print preset from the Print Preset menu in the Print dialog box (Figure 99; for more about print presets, see the sidebar on the next page), or choose Custom if you want to modify settings in any of the Print dialog box panes. You can also choose a printer from the Printer menu.

Figure 99 The Print dialog box contains several panes of controls for specifying printing settings. Here you see the General pane, which lets you choose a printer and specify the pages to print, and also provides options for printing objects, blank pages, and guidelines and gridlines that wouldn’t otherwise print.

If you choose a print preset, all you have to do is click Print. All of the settings in the General, Setup, Marks and Bleeds, Output, Graphics, Color Management, and Advanced panes of the Print dialog box are automatically set based on the settings in the selected preset. You can specify custom print settings by making changes in any of the panes. When you modify default settings for a print preset or choose a different printer from the Printer list, “[Custom]” is displayed in the Print Preset menu.

The Print dialog box contains several dozen controls—too many to attempt to explain here. It’s a good idea to examine the controls in each pane so that you know what’s available. You probably won’t need to change many of the controls very often, but, if you do, familiarity will come in handy.

When you create multipage documents with InDesign, the pages are displayed in the document window in the same order that a reader would read them. Page 1 is the first page, followed below by pages 2 and 3 (displayed together), then pages 4 and 5, and so on. Each facing-page spread is called a reader spread. However, before a multipage document is printed at a commercial printer, the pages must be rearranged into printer spreads. For example, the first page of a document and the last page form a printer spread. Page 2 and the next-to-last page are a printer spread, and so on. The process of creating printer spreads from reader spreads is called imposition.

Choosing the Print Booklet command (File menu) displays the Print Booklet dialog box (Figure 100), which provides several controls for specifying how multipage documents are printed. In the Setup pane, choose a print preset, specify the pages you want to print, and then choose one of the five options in the Booklet Type menu:

Figure 100 The Setup pane in the Print Booklet dialog box lets you control how multipage documents are printed. The Booklet Type menu provides five imposition options. The controls available in the Booklet Type section depend on what’s selected in the Booklet Type menu.

Here’s a brief description of the other controls in the Print Booklet dialog box: