Guide
How to proofread an image
A method for checking finished artwork — the file that is about to go live, not the document it came from.
Proofreading a design is not proofreading a document. The text is short, it sits in six different places, most of it is facts rather than sentences, and by the time anyone checks it, the person checking has already looked at the layout so many times that they read what they meant to write. This guide is the checklist that works around that — by hand, on any file, with no tool at all.
If you would rather have software do the mechanical half of it, that is what the AI image proofreader does; the last section explains where the line between the two sits.
The checklist.
Seven steps, in this order. The order is the point: facts before sentences, sources before opinions.
Get the text out of the layout
Write out every piece of text on the artwork as a plain list: headline, subhead, price, date, offer, button, disclaimer, small print, URL, handle. A design is a picture, and your eye reads pictures as shapes it already recognises. A list defeats that.
Check the facts before the sentences
Prices, dates, times, percentages, phone numbers, addresses and links — each one against the document it came from, not against memory. These are the mistakes that cost money, and no spell checker has an opinion about any of them.
Put the source next to the artwork
The brief, the approved copy, the price list, the master version. Proofreading without the source only proves the creative is internally tidy; most creative errors are perfectly spelled.
Read it out of order
Bottom to top, or one text block at a time in a random order. Reading in the intended order recreates the meaning you expect, which is exactly what hides the word that is missing.
Compare the versions against each other
Lay the sizes, languages and channel variants side by side and compare one element at a time across all of them: every price, then every date, then every CTA. Campaign errors are usually one version that never got the final edit.
Look at the edges
Truncated lines, text overlapping an image, a translation that no longer fits its box, a legal line that shrank until it cannot be read. This is the part of proofreading a design that has nothing to do with language.
Have someone else read it last
Ideally someone who did not make it. If that is not possible, leave it overnight — distance is the cheapest second pair of eyes there is.
What actually goes wrong.
Six mistakes that reach production far more often than typos do.
A price that changed once
The offer moved from €45 to €40 and eleven of twelve versions were updated.
A date that is not that day
“Sunday 12 July” when 12 July is a Saturday. Both halves look right on their own.
An old claim
Last season's tagline, or a guarantee that legal replaced two briefs ago.
A translation that drifted
The German version rounds the price differently, or drops the qualifier that made the claim legal.
Text that does not fit
The line that is cut off in the 4:5 crop but perfect in the 1:1.
The detail nobody owns
Opening times, a phone number, a URL with a typo in the campaign parameter.
Where software helps, and where it doesn’t.
Split the job honestly: the mechanical half is repetitive and unforgiving, which is what software is good at. The rest is judgement.
Software should do
Read every word on every version, every time, without getting tired at version 30. Compare what the artwork says with the brief, the approved copy and the price list. Flag numbers, dates and contradictions between versions. That is what LYNCE is for: upload the creatives, add the reference documents, get findings pinned to the artwork with a suggested fix.
You should do
Decide whether the idea works, whether the tone is right and whether a flagged line is deliberate. Nothing in a proofreading pass should approve or block a file on its own — and LYNCE doesn’t: it reports, and the decision stays with you.
Either way, keep the sources
The single biggest improvement to a proofreading pass is having the brief, approved copy and price list in the same place as the artwork. That is true for a person with a printout and for a tool with a scan.
Proofreading images, answered.
The final check, before it goes live.
Give the finished creative one more QA pass before publish, send or print.
Related