How Prepta works
Every file goes through five steps — upload, understand, preflight, fix, validate. What each step may do comes from the production profile you assign to the job and from your workspace: safe fixes run by themselves only where it allows, everything else waits for a person. The same file can be treated differently for a banner and for a sticker.
Below is one real-shaped job from start to finish: a customer PDF for a large-format campaign, exported from a design tool, with the problems that combination usually brings.
The file arrives as it is
A customer sends artwork for a large-format campaign. Nobody has looked at it yet. Prepta records it unchanged as version 1 and assigns the production profile for the job.
The original is never modified. Everything that follows creates new versions alongside it.
Work out what it is before judging it
File structure and image characteristics indicate a design-tool export rather than a professionally prepared PDF. That sets expectations: RGB colour, no bleed, live transparency, and imagery placed by the customer.
Reported as a likelihood with confidence, never as certainty.
Check against the profile that applies
The shop’s large-format profile, its own copy of the built-in set to CMYK only, asks for CMYK, 5 mm of bleed and at least 120 ppi at final size. Three findings: two errors against the profile and one that needs a decision.
What counts as an error comes from the profile. On the built-in Large Format profile, which accepts RGB, the colour finding would not exist.
Fix what a person confirms, hand over what is a decision
Prepta proposes a fix where it has one and says who decides. The bleed is mirrored from the page edge once the operator confirms it. Converting the colour through the production profile is the operator’s decision. No fix can add detail the logo never had, so it stays open with a request for the original.
Upscaling is never applied silently: when Prepta offers it, the offer states the resolution it will reach, and it runs only when you confirm.
Re-check the output, then release or hold
The fixed file is preflighted again against the same profile settings. The bleed now passes, but the logo is still below the minimum, so the file stays blocked instead of being marked ready, and the customer is asked for a better logo. The colour decision waits for the operator.
Every step above is in the audit trail, with the profile settings each check ran against.
What decides the behaviour
Each rule comes from the production profile assigned to the job, which is why the same customer file can need flattening for a cutter and keep its live transparency for a RIP. One setting is the workspace’s: whether safe fixes run without a click (Auto-fix safe issues).
Safe fixes
One correct result for the profile, such as outlining live text. With Auto-fix safe issues on, Prepta applies it as soon as the job is checked and records it; otherwise it waits for a click.
Fixes that change the artwork
Prepta proposes the fix and a person confirms it: bleed mirrored from a PDF’s page edge, transparency flattening, an upscale that states the resolution it will reach. The result is checked again.
Needs judgement
A fix exists but the trade-off is a decision, such as converting RGB that carries no colour profile, where Prepta cannot know which colour was meant. Prepta shows what it found and an operator decides.
Cannot safely fix
Detail that was never in the file cannot be added. Prepta stops, states the measurement, and recommends what to request.