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Guided workflow variation

Coming soon for Windows. Feature preview.

A preflight profile forevery press and product.

Write your spec sheet into named profiles once: business cards on the digital press, brochures on sheetfed, one regular client's house rules. Then every operator checks against the same numbers.

Named profiles turn a spec sheet into rules every operator applies the same way, and switching profile checks the open file again.

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If this sounds like your week

The spec sheet lives in a binder, not in the check.

Every shop has written rules: a bleed of 0.125 inches or 3 mm, a floor for photo resolution, CMYK only for the offset press, no extra spot inks on four-colour work, a fixed finished size per product. Those rules sit in a PDF on the shared drive or a laminated sheet by the counter. Applying them means reading the right sheet and comparing numbers by hand.

Where tooling usually breaks

Different presses, different rules, one tired operator.

A digital press may accept RGB images that the sheetfed line rejects. Wide-format work tolerates resolution that would look soft on a postcard. A loyal client may supply spot inks on purpose. When the counter juggles these from memory, good files get bounced and bad ones slip through, and the decision changes depending on who looked.

Where Print Preflight Desk lands

Name the rules once. Pick them every time.

On the Shop profiles page, each profile stores a trim size from presets or custom points, size tolerance, minimum bleed, error and warning thresholds for colour, grey, and 1-bit images, a colour policy, a maximum spot count with allowed names, a live transparency rule, and output intent handling. Choose it on the Preflight page and the open file is rechecked under it.

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What you get

Feature highlights

Named shop profiles

one profile per press, product, or customer, holding trim size, tolerance, minimum bleed, colour, grey, and 1-bit resolution limits, colour policy, spot colours with allowed names, transparency, and output intent.

Every check with page numbers

page size, TrimBox, CropBox, box nesting, bleed, effective ppi, fonts, colour spaces, transparency, spot colours, and output intent, each finding with its severity and pages.

A preview with the boxes drawn

the page renders with its Trim, Bleed, and Art boxes outlined and their sizes in points, and selecting a finding jumps to its page.

Reports to send back

a self-contained HTML report and a PDF report with the verdict first, the file’s SHA-256, the profile, and every finding with its pages.

A fixed copy for boxes and rotation

Save fixed copy writes the TrimBox and BleedBox from the profile and normalises the Rotate value in a new PDF, listing every change.

Original only read, nothing uploaded

reports and fixed copies are new files, colour, fonts, and transparency stay as supplied, and the app makes no network connections.

Especially when

  • Check every customer PDF against the shop’s own rules for that press, product, or customer, instead of judging it by eye at the counter
  • Get the same pass or fail answer on the same file whoever is on shift, from named profiles with every threshold written down
  • Send the customer a report that lists each problem with its page and the profile’s limit, instead of a rejection email written from memory
  • Correct missing or wrong TrimBox and BleedBox entries in a new copy, leaving the customer’s artwork and original file untouched

Who benefits

Real-world scenarios

Sheetfed and digital under one roof

Offset work must be CMYK with no spot inks, while the digital press takes ICC-tagged RGB photos. Operators kept rejecting digital files for RGB images that would have printed well.

Two profiles now sit side by side: one with Classic CMYK and zero spot colours, and a duplicate set to 2015 delivery, which allows ICC RGB images. The job ticket names the profile, and the verdicts stop contradicting each other.

A client with a house spot colour

A regular customer prints everything with one corporate spot ink, so their files always failed the shop's default rule of no spot colours, and staff learned to ignore that finding.

A profile named after the client allows one spot colour and lists the ink's exact name under Allowed names. Any other spot still fails, so a stray swatch from a stock image is caught instead of waved through.

Metric work beside US sizes

The shop prints Letter and Tabloid for local clients and A4 and A3 for an export customer whose cutter expects 3 mm of bleed rather than 0.125 inches.

The A4 and A3 profiles use the A4 210 × 297 mm and A3 297 × 420 mm presets and a minimum bleed of 8.5 pt, which the form notes is 3 mm. The Letter and Tabloid profiles keep 9 pt.

Deep dive

What goes into a preflight profile, field by field

Page. Trim size comes from a preset (US Letter 8.5 × 11 in, US Tabloid 11 × 17 in, A4 210 × 297 mm, A3 297 × 420 mm), Custom (points), or Any size, all pages equal. Tolerance (pt) sets how close the trim must be, and the starting profile uses 1 pt. Accept rotated match lets a landscape page pass a portrait size. Allow mixed page sizes decides whether a file may change size between pages. Minimum bleed (pt) is measured from the trim to the bleed on every edge; the form reminds you that 9 pt is 0.125 in and 8.5 pt is 3 mm.

Images. Four numbers set the resolution rules: Colour/grey error at or below (ppi), Colour/grey warning at or below (ppi), and the same pair for 1-bit images. The limits are inclusive, so with an error value of 149 an image at 149 ppi is an error and one at 150 ppi is not. The starting profile uses 149 and 224 for colour and grey, and 549 and 799 for 1-bit line art. Images 16 pixels or smaller are left out, and images far above the needed resolution are noted so oversized files are easy to spot.

Fonts and colour. Require embedded fonts makes any unembedded font an error. Flag Courier warns when Courier appears, which is usually a sign that a font went missing on export. Colour policy offers three choices: Classic CMYK, with no RGB, ICC, or Lab; 2015 delivery, which allows ICC-based RGB images; and Any, which reports colour spaces without failing on them.

Spot colours. Maximum spot colours sets how many named inks a file may carry, and Allowed names lists the ones a job may use, separated by commas. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, All, and None are never counted. Warn on Separation /All flags registration colour used in the artwork.

Transparency and output intent. Live transparency is set to Allow and report (PDF/X-4 style) or Forbid (PDF/X-1a style). Require CMYK blend space checks that transparency groups blend in CMYK. Missing output intent can be an Error, a Warning, a Note, or ignored, and Require CMYK intent profile checks a declared output intent against a CMYK destination.

Managing profiles. New profile starts from the shop defaults, Duplicate copies the selected profile so a variant takes seconds, Save profile stores it, and Delete asks first. The form checks that each error limit sits below its warning limit and that no two profiles share a name. Profiles are saved on the PC, and the app remembers the last profile you used.

A sound starting point. The first profile, Letter - sheetfed CMYK (GWG 2015), takes its numbers from the Ghent Workgroup GWG 2015 sheetfed CMYK specification, built on PDF/X-4. Duplicate it and adjust the fields that differ in your shop.

Feature preview

Explore the intended workflow

Named shop profiles

one profile per press, product, or customer, holding trim size, tolerance, minimum bleed, colour, grey, and 1-bit resolution limits, colour policy, spot colours with allowed names, transparency, and output intent.

Every check with page numbers

page size, TrimBox, CropBox, box nesting, bleed, effective ppi, fonts, colour spaces, transparency, spot colours, and output intent, each finding with its severity and pages.

A preview with the boxes drawn

the page renders with its Trim, Bleed, and Art boxes outlined and their sizes in points, and selecting a finding jumps to its page.

FAQ

Straight answers—no glossary dump

What is a preflight profile?

A preflight profile is a named set of rules a PDF must meet for a particular press, product, or customer: finished size, bleed, image resolution, colour, spot inks, transparency, and output intent. In Print Preflight Desk every check reads its thresholds from the profile you pick, so changing the profile changes what counts as an error, a warning, or a note.

How do I set up a profile for a new press or product?

Open Shop profiles and choose New profile, or select an existing profile and choose Duplicate. Type a Profile name, pick a Trim size preset or enter a custom size in points, then set the bleed, image, colour, spot, transparency, and output intent fields. Choose Save profile. It appears in the profile list on the Preflight page straight away.

What does the starting profile check?

Letter - sheetfed CMYK (GWG 2015) expects a US Letter trim within 1 pt, 9 pt of bleed on every edge, colour and grey images above 149 ppi with a warning at 224 or below, 1-bit images above 549 ppi with a warning at 799 or below, embedded fonts, CMYK colour with no RGB, ICC, or Lab, no spot colours, CMYK transparency blending, and a warning when no output intent is declared.

What happens when I switch profiles on an open file?

The file is checked again under the new profile, and the verdict, findings, and status line update to match. The status line names the profile, and saved reports record its name too, so a report always says which rules the file was checked against. The app also remembers the last profile you used for the next session.

Can one profile allow a customer's own spot colour?

Yes. Set Maximum spot colours to the number of inks the job may carry and type the ink names under Allowed names, separated by commas. Names are compared exactly, after decoding the way PDF stores them. Any other spot colour in the file still fails, so the customer's brand ink passes and a stray swatch is still flagged.

Where do customer files go, and how do I get Print Preflight Desk?

Print Preflight Desk is coming soon to the Microsoft Store for Windows and is not available to download or purchase yet. Use the email form on its product page to join the waitlist, then confirm your email address. We will send launch updates when there is news. No payment is taken.

Related pages

Preflight software built for the print shop counter. Check each customer PDF against the job's print specs. Set the TrimBox and BleedBox from your shop profile.

Print Preflight Desk is coming soon.

Join the waitlist for launch updates. The app is not available to download or purchase yet. No payment is taken.

Join the Print Preflight Desk waitlist
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Ghent Workgroup and GWG are names of the Ghent Workgroup. Print Preflight Desk is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Ghent Workgroup.