FlightCheck Professional- this production artists' prepress requirement before sending off for print


Author: David Dilling

Markzware had the opportunity to talk with Katie Searls from King Searls Designs in South Carolina about FlightCheck preflighting software and the role that preflighting plays in their prepress workflow.

Since starting her own agency, Seals has recognized the importance that preflighting plays with ensuring that her clients get the best quality of service. Any extra charges due to prepress problems could stop a job in its tracks at the last minute and cause missed deadlines. Searls makes sure to avoid prepress problems, because preflighting is an important step in her production workflow.

Katie Searls, the primary owner of King Searls Designs in Greenville, South Carolina, started her own agency after working in the advertising industry for two years at Erwin-Penland Advertising. Searls recognized the opportunities in this field, so ventured out with the knowledge and experience that she had gained in the advertising world, and became an entrepreneur in this field. Along with being a reliable and experienced source in the advertising industry, Searls is dedicated to ensuring that her clients' jobs are completed according to the committed time frame and are devoid of any prepress problems.

King Searls Designs is a full service graphic design studio, and as primary owner, Searls wears a variety of hats as a creative director, graphic designer and production artist. Their specialty is in printed materials, page layout, branding real estate photography and web design.

Among the many accounts and clients that they have, King Searls Designs is a preferred vendor for Homes & Land magazine. Making sure that Searls is preparing jobs for press so that they are accurate and on time is an important process about which Searls is passionate. Searls expressed, "Preflighting with Markzware FlightCheck is a requirement and is a part of the production cycle for each issue that is submitted to the printer."

Searls primarily uses Adobe InDesign Creative Suite and QuarkXPress for the prepress workflow production of the Home & Land real estate magazine. Searls commented, "We run FlightCheck as part of the Homes & Land proprietary software process to cut down on mistakes and speed up production." Searls considers FlightCheck to be mandatory preflighting software to speed up the prepress workflow when producing Homes & Land franchise magazines, as all the files that Searls preflights for those projects are native files.

Searls comments on one of the valuable features or functions within FlightCheck that she likes so much, "the ease of use is a benefit for the Homes & Land magazine that I produce. Also a big advantage is that it saves a lot of time in preparing jobs for press."

Markzware is always curious to hear opinions on where the future of printing is headed in the next 10 years, so we asked Searls for her thoughts, and she responded, "Realized by businesses as a necessary part of an advertising package. Web presence is crucial, but printed materials will never go out of style."

We want to hear from you. How are you preparing jobs for press with preflighting software? What are some of your biggest prepress problems or obstacles? Where do you see printing going in the next 5, 10, 15 years? Share with us.

About the Author

David Dilling is the European manager for Markzware Inc, a Santa Ana, CA (USA) based software developer. Specializing in patetented prelfighting (quality assurance), as well as DTP document conversion, file recovery and search tools and technology for the worldwide graphic design, layout, publishing, prepress and printing industries.

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