Hello. I'm Arnold Roosch from Markzware. Today, I will show you FlightCheck and
how it works in an Esco Switch environment.
We have lately been doing a lot of presentations locally with
distributors and other vendors.
to make sure that we get some one-on-one time with our actual customers,
instead of going to big shows,
where everybody grabs a flyer and you don't get to speak to anyone.
As I said, today, I want to show you FlightCheck and how it works in an
EscoArtwork Switch environment. So, let me get me behind my computer and show you
the presentation.
So, here we are with the presentation.
As I said, I'm going to show you the
presentation that I gave at the seminars about
Markzware's preflight, basically FlightCheck Professional,
in combination with EscoArtwork
EscoArtwork Switch,
but before we go into the
real deal of
FlightChecking,
let's go over some slides that will explain to you the basics of
the graphic arts industry.
First of all,
Garbage in is garbage out. This is the basics for a good file,
but there are still people out there that believe that if you have a
72dpi image RGB, and you
drop that into an InDesign file or a Quark document
and you output that to PDF or to your RIP station,
that it will be a perfect result.
Of course, this is not true.
If you put garbage in there,
never expect it to be an absolutely nice image
in the end.
Second one:
"Quality is everyone's responsibility" is a quote... quote from Demming
and basically says that everybody should
check what they hand off to someone else.
So you are responsible for the quality that you deliver to someone else.
As an illustration of that, we created a Quality Triangle,
and as you can see the Quality Triangle is an upside-down triangle
that gives you all the stages of the
document throughout the graphic arts workflow.
And down at the bottom, we see the designer.
And if the designer would takes his time and check his file and he would find a
small error,
he would be able to solve that error
and
do that in less than ten minutes
and probably cost him a couple of bucks;
where, if he didn't,
he would hand off
his file
containing an error
to other parts of the workflow. Then, the higher you get,
the more effort it will take to restore that small problem.
In the end, on the press, it could cost a few hours
and thousands of Euros
to eliminate that very small error
that could have been detected right at the beginning.
This is whyt you need quality control in every stage of the workflow.
Okay. We're getting into FlightCheck Professional, a stand-alone application
that can check for over fifty file formats.
So, standalone means that you don't need
Quark or InDesign
to check the InDesign file, the Quark file, or one of the other formats that we support.
To really understand what FlightCheck does,
let's go into the... the program itself,
so I can show you the...
the highlights of it.
So, we're going to switch to
FlightCheck.
I'm going to hide the rest.
This is basically what you see when you start up FlightCheck:
It's a button bar with some nice buttons on there. We'll go over the most important ones now.
First of all, the Ground Controls. The Ground Controls are the
main...
are the heart of FlightCheck.
This is where you create your rule sets. This is where you make your settings on
what you want to check for in your file.
It's very easy to... to make the settings, but, first, let's go over
and I will show you very quickly how many things you can check for.
FlightCheck Professional is a rule-based application, so you can
put on or off any rule you like
to check your file.
To make a setting, it's fairly easy.
If you click on a rule once,
it will give you a warning.
If this rule is flagged
when checking your document, then it will give you a warning.
And this could be handy,
for instance, for PMS color usage.
For one job,
PMS colors should be used. For another one, only CMYK should be used.
So, FlightCheck will give you a warning if PMS colors are found.
So, this will give you those three extra seconds to grab your
order sheet and make sure that it is okay.
If I click on it again, it becomes an error,
meaning that
if FlightCheck will detect this in the file,
it will give me a red cross, stating that
this file is not ready for protection.
This way, you can make all your settings.
And once you're done, you can save the setting under a name.
Or you can have multiple settings,
for instance, for one printer, for another printer, for one press to another press,
and in the end,
you can even import or export your files.
This is great, because now you can provide your customers with your settings,
or you can import your settings
from the printer
that you are sending your files to.
Once you have made those settings,
you're basically done and you're ready to check your files.
So, let's grab a file.
I got an
InDesign file here
and I can simply pick up the file and drop it
on my FlightCheck icon.
You don't need to grab your images, to find your fonts, or anything.
FlightCheck will do it for you.
Just pick up the file and drop it on FlightCheck.
Now, FlightCheck will do an in-depth
check
of the whole document,
not only seeing
if the image that you used in your file
can be found.
Now, it will find that image. It will get the image and it will check the whole image.
If there's a font used within that image, it will get the font, get the font in,
and check the whole font to see if it's ready for use.
Once FlightCheck is done with that,
it will give you basically two screens:
In one, are the FlightCheck results.
In this we get a very nice overview of everything that is wrong with your file.
In red, everything that is stated is an actual error.
In blue, you will find all the warnings.
So, for instance, if we go to RGB image,
then we get a whole list
of RGB images that are found in the document.
For instance,
this is an Illustrator EPS.
This is the name of the EPS.
This is the document where it was found
and the page on which it was found.
So, this will give you a very quick overview
of everything wrong with the file,
and now, withing two minutes after you receive the file,
you have a clear document
that you can use to communicate... start communicating to your client.
Either by phone,
by fax,
by email,
you can now make sure that the client understands what's wrong with his file
and you can make arrangements
for who's going to solve the problems.
Of course, for a prepress environment,
you need more information on this.
You want to know everything that is...
that is in the file,
That means not only things that are wrong or on a warning,
but also all the things that are okay, so you can make a judgment on
how to send your file and how to
send it to your output device.
So, we have the other screen, which is a general Overview screen.