This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Preflighting as you work
Whenever you start working on a document—whether you’re creating a document from scratch or revising an existing document—you will need to know the intended output of the document (print and/or digital display) and keep an eye on output issues. For example, are all the lines in the document thick enough to print, and will the colors display and print properly? You will learn more about all these issues throughout the lessons in this book.
In publishing, the process of evaluating a document for potential output issues is known as “preflighting.” The InDesign Live Preflight feature lets you monitor documents as you’re working to prevent problems from occurring. To customize Live Preflight, you can create or import production rules (called “preflight profiles”) against which InDesign checks your documents. The default profile supplied with InDesign flags issues such as missing fonts (fonts that are not active on your system) and overset text (text that does not fit in its frame).
In this exercise, you will check the document against the embedded Mailhouse profile, which the printer supplied to prevent common issues, such as the use of RGB colors in documents intended for CMYK output on a printing press.
Choose Window > Output > Preflight to open the Preflight panel; the Mailhouse profile is selected.
Using the Mailhouse preflight profile, InDesign finds nine errors, as indicated next to the red Preflight icon (
) in the lower-left corner of the Preflight panel. According to the Error list in the Preflight panel, the problems are in the COLOR category.To view the error, click the arrow next to COLOR in the Preflight panel.
A screenshot represents the preflight panel. The error list is shown. The color category is expanded. The options within are color space, text frame, compound path, and so on. The error list is labeled out. The On checkbox is selected. Profile drop-down list box is presented at the top-right corner.
Click the arrow next to Color Space Not Allowed, and then click the first instance of Text Frame in the list.
To display details for the error, click the arrow next to Info at the bottom of the Preflight panel.
The Problem is reported as “Content Uses RGB.” The Fix area offers the following suggestion: “Apply a swatch that uses a supported color space or mode, or edit the current swatch and specify a different color mode.”
Choose Window > Color > Swatches to display the document’s color swatches.
Double-click the Red-Bright swatch. In the Swatch Options dialog, select CMYK from the Color Mode menu (scroll up to locate the CMYK option if necessary). Click OK.
A screenshot illustrates the swatch options dialog box. Swatch name, color type, and color mode fields are present in the swatch options dialog box. OK and cancel buttons are present in the dialog box. The swatches panel is present at the right. Red-bright swatch in the swatches panel is labeled out.
Because the Color Space Not Allowed error was resolved, InDesign now reports No Errors in the Preflight panel and in the lower-left corner of the document window.
Close the Preflight panel and the Swatches panel, and then choose File > Save.
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