The InDesign 2025 preflight panel that originally debuted in CS4 is great. It seeks to proactively prevent prepress errors before deadline time. But it could be made even better, just by waking up more of its built-in features.
How so? At default, the Basic Working preflight profile checks for only missing links, missing fonts, and overset textframes. While these are the big things to look out for, there are so many more things it could be asked to check on. The Basic Working preflight profile is simply doing the minimum.
Why not let it check for things related to color like enforcing color space, allowing or disallowing the use of transparency in graphics, or spot color inks in the document? It can be set to alert you if you inadvertently apply overprinting or the Registration swatch incorrectly. It can be set up to enforce minimum and maximum image resolution, proportionality, and minimum stroke weight. It can alert you if objects cross the spine of the spread.
As for text, the preflight panel can alert you about much more than just a missing font. It can allow or disallow certain font types in your workflow, if you wish. Things like minimum font size and the use of paragraph and characters styles can be regulated by means of the preflight profile.
Finally, the preflight profile can check on page size and orientation, number of pages required, whether or not it will print blank pages, and can even check on whether you setup the document with proper bleed amounts.
So I made up two downloadable preflight profiles. One is for a CMYK workflow; and the other is for digital RGB workflow. These do not pretend to be correct for the way you are publishing. Rather, they are meant to be a starting point for learning about what the preflight panel can do for you in protecting your workflow from costly, time-consuming errors. You can download them here. For detailed directions on how to install and manage preflight profiles, click here for a "A PDF tour of presets in InDesign 2025" an 8-page guided tour of InDesign's 30 different presets.
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