Product Reviews

Pre-flighting - checking documents for errors before output - is a critical job traditionally left to dedicated standalone applications or online services. Markzware's FlightCheck Studio offers a unique alternative: the ability to proof files within their originating application.

Until now Studio has only been available as a bundle of XTensions for QuarkXPress 4 onwards, but this new release also offers identical InDesign CS and CS 2 flavours.

InDesign users might question Studio's usefulness, given that InDesign has its own built-in proofing tools. The answer is simple: compared to their Adobe equivalents, the checks performed by Studio are configurable, more extensive and make correction easier.

Studio revolves around policies, which are rules against which the contents of an open document are tested. Policies can have two roles. They can fulfil their usual function of warning against potential proofing issues, such as low image resolution, missing fonts or incorrect colour space. But you can also establish policies to ensure that, for example, only specified fonts, colours and even certain text styles are used in a job. Policy settings - optionally password-protected - can then be saved and distributed to ensure everyone in a project works to identical guidelines.

In both host programs, Studio shoehorns its features into a crowded palette accessible from either InDesign's Windows menu or XPress's Utilities menu. Given that Studio can check hundreds of potential policies, they are sensibly grouped into categories and sections, navigable via a hierarchical columnar pane in the upper half of the palette. This makes it simple to drill down to specific policy items and makes creating, editing or disabling them surprisingly quick.

Policies are created in a separate editing window, which shares the same categorisation as the main palette. Policies can be toggled on or off in their respective fields or you can select appropriate values in drop-down

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menus. Either way, it can be a time-consuming process; we found it easier to tweak Studio's intimidating and comprehensive default set. You can create different policy sets for different jobs or clients but, oddly, creating a new set doesn't automatically include the default settings.

Documents can be checked either manually or automatically at set times, such as when opening or saving a file or collecting for output. Each time the check is done, a list of objects that don't conform to the selected policy appears in the palette's lower pane.

It's here that FlightCheck Studio's advantage over standalone proofing tools becomes transparent. If you click the tiny 'Go To' icon to the left of a listed item, you're automatically transported to the offending object in the document so you can quickly identify and correct it.

Even better is the fact that if you double-click an object in the list, Studio offers to automatically fix it. It's wonderful when it works - settings, such as PDF export options, can be aligned to stated policies instantly. When Studio can't automatically repair things, it will at least attempt to open the appropriate dialog box or window so you can fix it yourself. Studio also communicates with other applications, which means that, in practice, if the colour mode of an image doesn't match the one set in the policy, Studio can open the picture in Photoshop for adjustment.

Studio isn't quite as feature-rich as its more expensive FlightCheck Professional sibling. But we don't think the missing features are critical for many. For example, although Studio lacks any 'collect for output' feature, InDesign and XPress both do this job fairly effectively on their own - and as you can automatically trigger a Studio policy scan when collecting for output it's hardly a noticeable omission. Other weaknesses are self evident: as Studio works within individual XPress or InDesign documents, you can't batch-check documents or proof other output formats, such as Adobe Illustrator or PDF files.

Still, Studio comes with plus points of its own. Its checks are rigorous and the support of InDesign CS 2 is a rarity among proofing tools. But more important is its performance. It scans documents far more quickly than the ponderous FlightCheck Professional.

While Studio isn't cost-effective for those who flit between XPress and InDesign - you have to buy separate versions for each - for anyone working exclusively in either it's more practical than a standalone application. Given its current reduced price, it's better value too.