There’s a lot of prep work to be done before you can get your print job off the ground.

By Jean-Marie Hershey

RIP me, fix me

While preflighting is closely related to both RIPping and file repair, it is synonymous with neither. For example, while RIPping can also highlight problems, it is far better and much less expensive to catch them before a job has been RIPped and output.

According to Gee Ranasinha of DALiM Software, “Most preflighting applications look for certain information, mainly contained in the file’s header, and as long as they find the right things in the right places, they say you’re pretty much ready to print. However, a RIP doesn’t work like that. A RIP has to actually open the file and interpret it, which is why RIPs will sometimes “kick out” a preflighted file.