Re: Fiery RIP and other ruminations
Re: Fiery RIP and other ruminations
- Subject: Re: Fiery RIP and other ruminations
- From: Nick Wheeler <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 18:03:01 -0400
James:
Actually no, you are way better off with the Epson RIP and the 3000. This is
a true CMYK setup, you can control black generation, ink limits etc as the
Epson RIP is true Postscript and accepts and send four channels of
information on to the printer, relatively unadulterated near as I can tell.
Easy to demonstrate. Send a CMYK file to the 3000 via the Epson RIP from
Photoshop. Set up a couple of different separations of the same RGB or LAB
original with different ink limits - say one at 400% and one at 270%. The
400% separation will print soaking wet and the 270 will be quite dry, all
other settings being equal. Now try printing separations, voila: Cyan
Magenta Yellow and Black plates. Hey - find a contact printer and some ink
jet film and you'll have yourself a really lousy imagesetter! But I take it
you are teaching at a school so this might actually be a useful tool.
Get a hold of Dan Burkholder's book Making Digital Negatives for Contact
Printing and that would be a really great class.
Oops - Design Masters Associates doesn't sound like a school. Oh well.
Unfortuanately the Epson RIP doesn't speak postscript too well and chokes on
almost anything out of the ordinary. Doesn't tell you why either, just sits
there stupidly. Sometimes if you are lucky it will lock up whatever machine
it's running on so at least you know something is wrong. Best to just send
it CMYK tiff files from Photoshop. RIP stuff into Photoshop from wherever
and go from there.
Well the 3000/Epson RIP is a true CMYK printer which is why there are lots
of Epson 3000 devotees out there. You will be able to profile the 3000 with
your new Gretag stuff as a CMYK printer, IF you use the Epson RIP. If you
print to it with Quickdraw driver no - then it is an RGB device as far as
software is concerned.
That's the problem with the Fiery - while it pretends to be a CMYK device it
really is not. It is in fact a three channel device masquerading as a four
channel device.
Hey, I'm the complete fool. I bought an Epson/Fiery combination a few years
ago thinking it was naturally a true CMYK set up. Imagine how stupid I felt
upon discovering fiddeling with black generation curves and ink limits meant
nada to the thing. I had to meekly submit.
To add insult to injury the Fiery screening is worse than the Epson
Quickdraw screening! Praxisoft, Bestcolor and Colorbyte all claim to have
superior screening in their RIPs. Check them out. But remember, all thesse
new RIPs with all the six color printers are three channel devices - no ink
limits, no black control. Forget about it.
Best wishes,
Nick Wheeler