InDesign® CS4 Bible

Chapter 29. Preparing for Printing

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Setting up printers and drivers

• Setting general printer options

• Preflighting documents to find problems

• Packaging documents for printing

• Working with service bureaus

• Setting up booklets

After your document is created and all elements are perfectly in place, with the right colors, frame strokes, kerning, and so on, it's time to make tangible all that work you've done on-screen. You're ready to print the document.

Well, not quite. You may in fact be ready to just print your document, but if your document is at all complex or will be output at a service bureau or through your company's creative services group or print shop, you should take a few minutes and dot your i's and cross your t's. Little things can go wrong as you or your team work on a document — a font might deactivate, a picture might move or be renamed, or a new output device might be acquired.

That's where InDesign's preflighting and packaging capabilities come into play. The preflighting capability checks your document to make sure that all elements are available and meet your production requirements, while the packaging capability copies all required elements — from fonts to graphics — to a folder so that you can give your service bureau all the pieces it needs to print your document accurately.

Making Initial Preparations

Before you can do anything, you need to make sure your system is set up with the right printer driver and printer description files because without these, your ...