Alternative for Acrobat for Preflight

Printing and Prepress
#1

I use Acrobat mainly to check the separations, spot colors, print settings, and PDF/X standard compatibility.
As I do more and more work in the Affinity programs I’m looking for a non Adobe alternative for this.
Does anyone here use a non Adobe app for this?

#2

I’ve never used a non-Adobe product for preflight. Affinity Publisher v. 1.8 (Feb. 2020 update) notes that they offer preflight. Have you tried it?

As for non-Adobe solutions, here is a short list. These are not recommendations, as I have never tried them.

#3

We use Pitstop
Check if the rip you are using has a custom preflight panel too.

#4

Thanks, I thought Pitstop was an Acrobat plugin. I’m a designer, so I don’t have a rip :slight_smile:

#5

I didn’t know Affinity Publisher offered that, will check it out. Will also looks at the other links, thanks!

#6

Sorry, yeah, it is. Missed the non-adobe…

#7

To be fair - Adobe are the author of the PDF - they wrote the standard.
I wouldn’t use 3rd party PDF software to sort out your files, as professional printers would still use Adobe - and not all 3rd party PDF software adheres to the Adobe PDF modules.

As much as you’d like to move completely away from Adobe, I wouldn’t trust any other PDF reader.