The survey, which netted nearly 5,000 responses from a mix of designers, publishers, specialty and commercial printers, revealed that only 60% of incoming files received in the last 12 months had been preflighted.

Enfocus said that whilst respondents, 50% of whom were either prepress managers or designers, had been positive about its products, it was "less encouraging" to find that 40% of PDF files did not get preflighted.

David van Driessche, marketing director at Enfocus, said: "Enfocus, and other parties such as the Ghent PDF Workgroup, have spent an enormous amount of time and effort on advocating the need for quality control.

"Our survey shows that there is still a large amount of users who are not convinced of the need to check every PDF file that hits their workflow. Continued education remains of the essence."

Belgian-based Enfocus revealed that the most common preflight errors were fonts not being embedded, low resolution images and RGB colours being used.

The survey also revealed that PDF-based workflows were on the rise, with 53% of all jobs received in PDF format and 78% of jobs sent out, either internally or externally, also in PDF.

In addition, 26% of all PDF files received were PDF/X compliant and 11% were compliant with Ghent PDF Workgroup specifications.

Enfocus reported high levels of satisfaction with its PitStop Professional and PitStop Server preflighting tools, as well as its Switch family of products.