.dev.lqd
Angry Member
Nearly a year ago I got my whole Design/Multimedia setup. It included an HP Deskjet 1220C/PS printer... $100 more than the 1220C model, because it boasted 'Postscript3 capabilities'. These came in the form of Adobe Pressready Basics, a software based PS3-> PCL (HP's printer control language) converter, which acted as your RIP (Raster Image Processor).
Basically- RIP's take care of handling the vector-raster conversion for your printer, rather than relying on whatever means your printer has to reproduce these curves. They are (generally) how you get your print jobs to look nice. HP toted the 1220C/PS as a desktop proofing solution for designers, as it was a wideformat printer so you could do full bleed 11x17 proofs for your clients, and they would look nice thanks much to Adobe's software package.
Unfortunately, Adobe has stopped development of Pressready, which meant that I was out around $100 in software RIP when I moved to OSX. Pressready worked fine under classic, but as more applications I used went native, that no longer was an option. So.... now for some more publishing facts.
PDF's are a kind of restructured Postscript print job. RIP's recieve the postscript job (which contains images, document pages, fonts, color profiles, etc. etc.) and convert it to an object list, which is a distilled, more clearcut version of the postscript job that's fed into the actual image processing system of the RIP and then sent to the printer as one huge image (basically). One could say that PDF's : Java bytecodes (.class's) :: Postscript : Java source (.java's).
So- what I did is from illustrator (or what have you) I go to print, setup all my options for a nice, high quality print, and then for the output I set it to save as a file (a pdf!). I then open that up in Preview (which is handled by MacOSX's quartz rendering engine). When I print from there (with all my high quality settings) Preview acts as my RIP, creating an enormous raster (pixel based) image that it dumps to my printer via HP's stock OSX printer drivers, which still manage my color via PhotoRetIII).
I haven't tested this A LOT, but the results I've gotten thus far have been good... can anyone verify/refute this?
Basically- RIP's take care of handling the vector-raster conversion for your printer, rather than relying on whatever means your printer has to reproduce these curves. They are (generally) how you get your print jobs to look nice. HP toted the 1220C/PS as a desktop proofing solution for designers, as it was a wideformat printer so you could do full bleed 11x17 proofs for your clients, and they would look nice thanks much to Adobe's software package.
Unfortunately, Adobe has stopped development of Pressready, which meant that I was out around $100 in software RIP when I moved to OSX. Pressready worked fine under classic, but as more applications I used went native, that no longer was an option. So.... now for some more publishing facts.
PDF's are a kind of restructured Postscript print job. RIP's recieve the postscript job (which contains images, document pages, fonts, color profiles, etc. etc.) and convert it to an object list, which is a distilled, more clearcut version of the postscript job that's fed into the actual image processing system of the RIP and then sent to the printer as one huge image (basically). One could say that PDF's : Java bytecodes (.class's) :: Postscript : Java source (.java's).
So- what I did is from illustrator (or what have you) I go to print, setup all my options for a nice, high quality print, and then for the output I set it to save as a file (a pdf!). I then open that up in Preview (which is handled by MacOSX's quartz rendering engine). When I print from there (with all my high quality settings) Preview acts as my RIP, creating an enormous raster (pixel based) image that it dumps to my printer via HP's stock OSX printer drivers, which still manage my color via PhotoRetIII).
I haven't tested this A LOT, but the results I've gotten thus far have been good... can anyone verify/refute this?
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