While Adobe's PDF format has become the preferred one for creating commercial printed output, that's not to say that many things can't go wrong between a layout created in QuarkXPress or InDesign, the resulting PDF file provided to the printer, and the final output. It's generally considered a good idea to preflight the native document file, for example. And then to make sure the generated PDF file is also free of errors before handing it off for printing.

Zevrix Solutions is known for its existing quality control solutions, InPreflight for Adobe InDesign and Graphic Inspector for all graphic files. To this has now been added PDF Checkpoint, which checks fonts, colors, images and metadata of multiple PDF files and lets users instantly potential problems according to user-defined preflight profiles. Customizable preflight profiles are said to allow users to check PDFs for specific attributes, such as image resolution, color model and PDF/X compliance. The utility also allows users to route PDF files according to preflight results, split PDFs into single pages and extract images.

PDF Checkpoint 1.0 for Mac is currently being made available on the Zevrix Solutions site as a freely downloadable beta, with qualified beta-testers being able to purchase it for half price.