Re: Fiery RIP and other ruminations
Re: Fiery RIP and other ruminations
- Subject: Re: Fiery RIP and other ruminations
- From: James Steincamp <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 19:30:55 -0400
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Actually no, you are way better off with the Epson RIP and the 3000. This is a
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true CMYK setup, you can control black generation, ink limits etc as the Epson
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RIP is true Postscript and accepts and send four channels of information on to
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the printer, relatively unadulterated near as I can tell.
Although other folks have pointed this out already, EpsonRIP pretty much
takes whatever you send it and reprocesses it; either:
1. Source cmyk -> Unknown rgb -> Epson cmyk
2. Source rgb -> Epson cmyk (perhaps it converts Source rgb to Unknown rgb
before mangling with Epson rgb).
There's no documentation about what's happening to your file and no method
of altering its behaviour. In our case, with the Epson 3000, we found that
it really plugs up the density in shadow areas and over saturates primary
colors. Since we show our clients color comps and mock-ups (and they take
these to be 'contract proofs' or visual targets), this has proven to be an
endless source of pain and frustration; both for us and our printers. The
EpsonRIP software is also poky and temperamental.
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Get a hold of Dan Burkholder's book Making Digital Negatives for Contact
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Printing and that would be a really great class.
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Oops - Design Masters Associates doesn't sound like a school. Oh well.
No, but I am a photographer by training; I used to make cyanotypes and dye
transfer prints, though in the darkroom. A friend of mine from college has a
copy of the book and has done some experimentation in that regard.
I get your point about the problem with black generation when you have a six
color printer... but I'm a bit confused about why it matters. If I am using
the Epson 5500 to emulate SWOP for example, isn't this handled by the
profile?
Anyrate, I want to thank everyone who responded. We are going to go with:
1. Epson 5500
2. BestColor Medium (RIP Software)
3. Windows 2000 Server; Pentium 4 Dual Processor (RIP Station)
4. Gretag Macbeth iBundle (apparently there is a new product labeled 'pro')
5. Gretag Macbeth EyeOne (so that our designers can calibrate/profile their
monitor with a less expensive device, that is also USB native).
I'm just beginning to realise the magnitude of what I have gotten myself
into. Not only do I have to learn the ProfileMaker software, but I also have
to learn the RIP software and a new OS (Windows 2000); hopefully Services
for Macintosh are not as flaky as with NT 4. I sincerely hope that the
BestColor folks will introduce a version of the RIP software for MacOS X.
It's with a great deal of trepidation that I'm bringing a Windows box into
the art department.
BTW, is it better (faster) to attach the Epson 5500 to the RIP Station via
USB or to hook the printer into a 100b/t network?
-james