Brian Liu
New Member
- Joined
- 2026
- Posts
- 1
- Geo
- US
Run a small print shop. Maybe 1 in 5 files come in actually ready for press. Today's was a tri-fold brochure.
File came in: a PDF the customer generated from Canva. 2 pages, 11 × 8.5 in flat. "It's print-ready."
Opened it up. TrimBox and BleedBox were identical — no bleed anywhere. Both pages had low-res images (129 dpi on one side, 176 dpi on the other). Color was a mix of RGB and CMYK.
What I did:
1. Preflight — logged every issue. No bleed, low-res images, mixed color spaces. Didn't touch the images or colors — just noted them.
2. Added bleed — mirrored the edges out to 0.125 in. Original content inside the trim area stayed exactly where it was.
3. Panel layout check — mapped out the fold lines and panel boundaries to make sure no text was falling into the fold zone.
4. Pixel-level diff — compared the original content area against my output. Result: 0.00% difference. Nothing moved, scaled, or clipped inside the trim area.
End-to-end: about 25 minutes. Customer gets a file that actually works on press, a proof they can approve, and a list of things that didn't get fixed (those low-res images, the mixed color spaces).
Some shops charge for fix time, some eat it. A couple workflow questions for the prepress folks here:
- Are you still running manual preflight checks, or have you automated any part of it?
- Where's your personal cutoff between "I'll fix this" and "send it back"? Is it a DPI threshold, a time budget, or something else?
File came in: a PDF the customer generated from Canva. 2 pages, 11 × 8.5 in flat. "It's print-ready."
Opened it up. TrimBox and BleedBox were identical — no bleed anywhere. Both pages had low-res images (129 dpi on one side, 176 dpi on the other). Color was a mix of RGB and CMYK.
What I did:
1. Preflight — logged every issue. No bleed, low-res images, mixed color spaces. Didn't touch the images or colors — just noted them.
2. Added bleed — mirrored the edges out to 0.125 in. Original content inside the trim area stayed exactly where it was.
3. Panel layout check — mapped out the fold lines and panel boundaries to make sure no text was falling into the fold zone.
4. Pixel-level diff — compared the original content area against my output. Result: 0.00% difference. Nothing moved, scaled, or clipped inside the trim area.
End-to-end: about 25 minutes. Customer gets a file that actually works on press, a proof they can approve, and a list of things that didn't get fixed (those low-res images, the mixed color spaces).
Some shops charge for fix time, some eat it. A couple workflow questions for the prepress folks here:
- Are you still running manual preflight checks, or have you automated any part of it?
- Where's your personal cutoff between "I'll fix this" and "send it back"? Is it a DPI threshold, a time budget, or something else?
