Free Live Preflight Profiles for InDesign CS4

David Blatner

4

The Live Preflight feature in InDesign CS4 is an awesome way to check your documents for errors before you export them. We’ve previously mentioned that Live Preflight seriously speeds up your work and that you can customize it to look for the things you want it to find. (We have also pointed out some of its limitations.)

But one of the problems with Live Preflight is that you have to figure out which checkboxes to turn on and which to turn off. Wouldn’t it be cool if someone did that work for you?

Fortunately, VIGC (the Flemish Innovation Center for Graphic Communication) has done just that. They have recently released a set of 13 standard preflight profiles with names like:

• VIGC_v1.0_Prepare for MagazineAds_1v4.idpp
• VIGC_v1.0_Prepare for NewspaperAds_1v4.idpp
• VIGC_v1.0_Prepare for SpotVeryHiRes_1v4.idpp
• VIGC_v1.0_Prepare for SheetCmyk_1v4.idpp

They’re free to download. After downloading and unzipping, you can load one or more of them into InDesign by opening the Preflight panel, choosing Define Profiles, and then choosing Load Profiles (from the little unnamed popup menu in the lower-left corner of the dialog box). The profiles even come with some sample INDD documents that you can use to test.

I haven’t had a chance to use them extensively yet, but my immediate reaction is: Wow, this is just what the doctor ordered! Someone else went through the settings systematically and with some thought about what each output condition would need. Thank you VIGC!

[update, July 1, 2010: VIGC has updated their profiles, offering them for CS5, and adding 5 new profiles with new CS5 features. The links above have not changed, however.]