Custom Preflight Report

GaryPrintnw · Post by **GaryPrintnw** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 12:55 am

Im looking to build a completely customer preflight report, i believe its possible with pitstop server, but was wondering if anybody has done it and hard it will be, is it worth me out sourcing it? Does anybody even create customer preflights.

Basically what i want is the ability to drop a pdf in a hot folder and for it to give me back a preflight report that is customer friendly. I a person not in the print word to be able to understand it and what exactly it is talking about.

For example:

instead of the report saying this

Resolution of color or grayscale is less then 200 ppi (2x on page 1)

I want it to say

The following images are low resolution and may print blurry, pixelated, or appear grainy:

Page 2 – image 1 inch from top and 5 inches from the left is 72 ppi.

or

Page 2 – image named woman.jpeg, 72 DPI

Please review carefully.

Thank you

dkelly · Post by **dkelly** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 1:18 am

"Page 2 – image 1 inch from top and 5 inches from the left is 72 ppi."

While the preflight program knows the location of an image I don't think they make it available to the report writer.

"Page 2 – image named woman.jpeg, 72 DPI"

The filename of a placed image isn't usually stored in a PDF unless you have enabled OPI or XMP metadata embedding.

freddyp · Post by **freddyp** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:52 am

In PitStop Server (and hence also in Switch) you can change the look of the report, but the messages stay the same.

You can use Action Lists to customize the text of the messages. You make the selection you want (Select by image resolution) and then you use "Log selection" with a message that you write yourself.

If you want to have messages like "The image 1 inch from the top", you will have to create an XML report and use an XSLT transformation to create a new XML with the desired message (the positions, but indeed not the names, of the images are in the XML report). Although possible, do not do this on an empty stomach

Once you have the transformed XML I think you can turn it into a PDF using one of Dwight's tools, but he can certainly say more about that.

Freddy

GaryPrintnw · Post by **GaryPrintnw** » Mon Dec 15, 2014 5:51 pm

Thank you Freddy. What do you mean by Dwight's tool, who do i need to get a hold of? Im willing to put the time in, but how would i get started? Is there a documentation out there i can read?

dkelly · Post by **dkelly** » Mon Dec 15, 2014 5:58 pm

I think Freddy is talking about Apago's PDFspy and PDF Constructor products. Contact sales@apago.com