The basic idea is to prepare the files to make them feasible for the correct process such as offset printing and eliminate costly errors and facilitate a smooth production.
The term was first used in a presentation at the Color Connections conference in 1990 by consultant Chuck Weger, and Professor Ron Bertolina was a pioneer for solutions to preflighting in the 1990s.
Depending on the hardware and software components and configurations, RIPs can experience problems rasterizing the image data contained in PostScript or PDF files.
The process of preflighting a file helps reduce the likelihood of rasterization problems that cause production delays.
Page layout software applications (which allow users to combine images, graphics, and text from a variety of formats) automate portions of the preflight process.
Early preflight methods were largely manual, and typically relied on checklists that highly skilled prepress operators would use to verify the production readiness of each incoming job.