Re: Rip, just another rip-off or money well spent?

[Brad Walrod <BRAD@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by Rafe B.

"Typically, people who use Quark or Illustrator on
Macs get Postscript files as output, and this is
where one *must* use a RIP to get such a file 
printed."

An otherwise nice description, but I thought I should point out that the
above statement isn't exactly correct.

QuarkXPress can output just fine from my Mac to my Epson without a RIP
_unless_ I have embedded vector-graphics (EPS files). Then all I get (for
the graphics) are the 72-dpi, jaggy screen previews. Same with Adobe
PageMaker.

(I've heard that XPress on a PC is a whole lot happier with PostScript, but
I have no details.)

Adobe Illustrator, however, can print fine to an Epson without a RIP. It's
only when you save the Illustrator file as an EPS and bring it into XPress
or PageMaker that a RIP is necessary to interpret the PostScript and print
a nice image.

Folks that have Acrobat Distiller can use it to RIP a DTP file containing
EPSs by printing to a PostScript file, running it through Distiller, and
printing the subsequent PDF file from Acrobat Exchange. 

I wouldn't want to do this all day every day, but this method produces far
better files than I can get from the only RIP I've purchased, Infowave's
StyleScript.

Brad
-
Please: Stay on topic. Trim quoted messages.
http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions.