Re: 1520 + RIP

[Dan Culbertson <danculb@concentric.net>]

Joe Veras wrote:
snip:
A call to Epson Tech Support suppled the answer in the form of
>needing to order and install Stylus RIP.
>
>This solved the immediate problem.  The pages printed as they appeared on
>the monitor, albeit more slowly than before.  The trouble is, they came
>with a secondary problem: The greyscale photos now all have a Red cast to
>them, acutally they look a lot like the old sepia tone photos.  Another
>call to Epson Tech Support.  The Tech who answered told me, "There is no
>way to adjust color using the RIP.  You'll just have to live with it."
>
>Maybe so.  I just wondered if anyone here has a different answer/solution.
>
>The platform involved is PC.

With StylusRIP setup without any color correction you should be able to get
exactly the same color as with the standard driver so if you were getting
good neutrality (and only had the postscript text problems) then StylusRIP
should be able to match the previous results.  However, in some versions of
StylusRIP there is a "feature" called "press simulation" and some computer
systems (for some very strange reason) cannot access it to turn it off.
This impresses a "default" profile on your file and creates a distinct
mess.  On a Macintosh, the culprit is the use of Adobe PS printer version
8.5.1 which does not work with the current StylusRIP (Adobe PS version
8.3.1 works like a champ).  I am not a PC guru so, unfortunately, I can't
advise which versions might work.  You can download the PC version of Adobe
PS interpreter from Adobe's site to see if this will work better with
StylusRIP than the built-in PC interpreter (if any??) which sits in front
of StylusRIP.  You need to find a way of making StylusRIP stop impressing
that built-in profile and this is the only way I know how to control it.

The problem is that both StylusRIP and the standard driver do not print
black with black ink in the medium to light areas.  They substitute neutral
blends of CMY and, with a messed up profile in the loop, there ain't no
such thing as a neutral blend.  The Epson technician is right in that there
is no way in StylusRIP to adjust color (no sliders etc) but when the
channels are coming through untainted you can adjust colors with the
application from a CMY file with a pretty fair accuracy.  Just be sure to
do your mode change to CMYK with the right StylusRIP profile set in
Photoshop's CMYK setup (there should be a StylusRIP profile for each paper
type and resolution setting).  In Photoshop 5 you can apply it in the print
dialog box in Space or in the CMYK setup prior to a mode change.  If you
are starting in RGB or grayscale you can do a mode change using the profile
in CMYK setup then adjust the colors in CMYK mode to get a neutral (not the
black channel though it may as well not exist as far as StylusRIP is
concerned).

If that doesn't work, and if, on the PC version of AdobePS, there is a
Postscript Color Management (or similar) box in place of the Printer Color
Management box, you might try checking that box and in the Options print
dialog, select ColorSync color matching and select the Epson profile there.
This usually doesn't work as well as doing all the profile applying in
Photoshop but it may work with Quark as well as Photoshop since it is a
function of AdobePS and not the editing application.  I can't say for sure
that the PC version has this option but it was at one time the only
consistent way you could apply profiles on a Mac.

One other thing to check -- In the Photoshop 5 ColorSettings Grayscale
Setup, there is an option for "Grayscale Behavior".  If you are printing
directly from a grayscale file the choice you make here can alter the
printed results.  Try changing back and forth from "RGB" to "Black" in the
ink behavior box.  If that doesn't do anything and you are really only
looking for grayscale output (not mixed color and grayscale) you can choose
"Grayscale" in the Ink options of Stylus RIP.  This limits the driver to
using *only* black ink so it will not replace black with blends of CMY.
This will, however, make the dithering appear more coarse since the black
dots in the highlights are more apparent than a mix of CMY dots.  If you
see a "Black and White" choice don't use it -- it will give you only black
and white, no gray.

The PC version of StylusRIP seems to be even more quirky than the Mac
version (no one has reported success with it to my knowledge) so I think
your best bet might be to hold on for a while and wait for Adobe
PressReady.  Don't know when it will support the 1520 but the 3000 is
supposed to be just around the corner.

One person on the list suggested using Adobe's Acrobat Exchange which
rasterizes your Quark vector files and lets you print through the standard
driver.  I think the controversy on that thread was that this is an option
of last resort (for some reason I don't recall).

Dan Culbertson




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