Re: Quark/Epson Stylus RIP Madness
Re: Quark/Epson Stylus RIP Madness
- Subject: Re: Quark/Epson Stylus RIP Madness
- From: George Mack <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 12:05:25 -0400
Dennis
I have had good to excellent results using PressReady with custom
files made by WiziWYG. Stylus RIP, though workable, was only fair to
good, and a pain to use as well, since you had to have the program
open and using RAM to print at all. PressReady launches ONLY when
you're printing, then quietly quits.
There are some limits, however:
1) Quark color management gets in the way.
2) Tiff files are color-managed, but JPEG and EPS (Including
Illustrator) are not.
3) You do have to hack a little to get PressReady to use your custom
profiles (use Epson's internal and external file names on the
profile, and drop it into your profiles folder. There are
AppleScripts available to assist you, I think on the ColorSync web
site.)
PressReady gives me much better color than the Stylus RIP ever did; I
understand that the Epson RIP changes CMYK to RGB on the way out, and
the machine translates it back into Epson-flavored CMYK. (If your
printer is supported ...) PressReady is a true CMYK rip, and although
Adobe doesn't plan on continuing its development (a shame in my mind,
but based on the contents of OSX for printing) it still works fine
here, on a G4 running OS 9.1.
In addition, you get CreatePDF, which helps generate really good PDFs
with a minimum of hassle.
I have also heard that the Praxis XTension is a strongly recommended
addition for improving Quark output, but so far the idea of shelling
out $300+ for an Xtension has not won me over. It should take care of
the JPEG/EPS issue and, IF you also buy their Vector management
product, it can take care of the Illustrator and Spot color fidelity
issues. My clients are not, at the stage I send inkjets to them, that
picky.
For my money, PressReady and WiziWYG are a great solution. As an
alternative, consider getting Acrobat, making RGB Pdfs, and printing
from Acrobat (an extra step, but can provide good results; you should
be aware that the PDFs look much more realistic if images are RGB to
begin with.)
Hope this helps.
George
--
GEORGE MACK DESIGN - Scituate, MA 02066 - (781) 544-3880
Design-Illustration-Desktop Publishing-Miscellaneous Magic