Patent ID: 8296653

Claim:
A method of pre-press checking and editing digital assets by a print customer, wherein the print customer is a user, for use in a variable information print job comprising: organizing the digital assets desired by the user into sub-groups of similar content; downloading a virtual layout template to a user site remote from a printing site; determining whether the desired digital assets satisfy specifications and rules for populating particular fields in the virtual layout template, the determining including: in response to receiving a user selection of a particular placeholder in the virtual layout template, comparing parameters of each of the desired digital assets in a sub-group against the specifications and rules defined for a particular field represented by the particular placeholder, and in response to receiving a user selection for a particular digital asset in the sub-group, determining if the particular digital asset complies with the specifications and rules designated for the particular field represented by the particular placeholder in the virtual layout template; in response to the determining, displaying the particular digital asset that is fully usable for the particular placeholder and placeholders that are fully usable with the particular digital asset, in response to one of the parameters of the each of the desired digital assets in the sub-group not complying with the specifications and rules defined for the particular field represented by the particular placeholder and the particular digital asset not complying with the specifications and rules for the particular field represented by the particular placeholder, advising the user of an incompatibility of the particular digital asset with a variable data field; in response to the displaying and advising, receiving a selection of the usable digital asset from the sub-group and placing the selected usable digital asset onto the virtual layout template at the user site; and uploading the selected usable digital asset to the printing site.