InPreflight

While InDesign is an undisputed favourite of the design community, it does lack some of the professional edges that make outputting to print that little bit easier. One of these omissions is preflighting.

Thankfully, Adobe is happy for third parties to plug such gaps, which is exactly what InPreflight does. It acts as a quality-control centre for InDesign documents, and lets you quickly identify any potential output errors before your files are sent to the printers.

Fonts, colours, resolutions and links are individually listed within the workable interface, all of which give real-time readings on the quality of the InDesign document. Missing links and fonts can be quickly found (and even automated to save more time) and the resolution checker is simply a saviour. Full OPI images are automatically linked, too, saving any dull directory searching, while both colour space and model are checked and embedded.

Once you’ve got the green light, InPreflight generates a report and activates InDesign’s Package script, creating a bulletproof output file. We ran several documents – all amassed with complex fonts and picture links – through the preflighting process, and though initially a mess, InPreflight made easy work of relinking files and finding fonts. The user-definable presets are sensible and easy to set up too, and all but guarantee error-free output.

A second boon is InPreflight’s ability to really open up InDesign, unlocking what used to be some fairly irritating restrictions. TIFF and EPS files are battered into compatibility, and fonts in Illustrator files are now individually recognised.