Problems with PreFlight

From Monday of last week to today I have received  at least a dozen InDesign files emailed to me along with a print ready PDF. All these files I was told were print ready. Now sometime I like to just open up an InDesign file and make a few tweaks to clients artwork that might make things easier to read once the file is actually printed. I do these for free because I like to make my clients happy and I take pride in the pieces that we print. Normally its simple things like just pushing back a few words away from a boarder so nothing gets cut off. My problem is out of these file at least 3 have been sent riddled with preflight issues. Now if the customer were to send over this file as just a PDF, I would have never noticed that their website was cut off, or that a whole paragraph was missing from a column, the low resolution pictures are something that I am able to pick up on when the proof is made. This leads me to my problem with PreFlight in InDesign, nobody seems to use it.

A little background, before I got into printing, I went to to school and got a my bachelors in graphic design. While in school I did all my internships at print shops. While all my other classmates went off to work in design firms because they wanted to produce the next album cover for their favorite artist I was dealing with prepress issues, due to this preflighting or lack there of have become a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

I made a quick little write up on the basic start of prelight checks, I highly suggest anyone who isn't sure about preflighting to check them out.

Check out my guide here