PPD's and setups

[mezzi5]

I wanted to post this in the printer general discussion but it seems more relevant here as this is a prepress issue.

What follows in brackets are the OS versions...
I have os9, osx(10.4.3), win98(sp1&unofficial sp2) and winXP(sp2) drivers for a discontinued harlequin RIP. Nevertheless these are the official OS correct drivers for the RIP. The windows drivers have been installed with Winsteng (win98/XP versions where necessary).

The Harlequin RIP and imagesetter are postscript level 2.

I'll need to check the Mac for this problem.

With Windows, all goes well and the printer pops up in the Printers/Faxes.

Printing from Freehand, Coreldraw and Quark is fine - I can set custom screen rulings as necessary, custom page sizes and the imagesetter resolutions through a custom dialogue box - most commonly 1800dpi. (it supports 1000 through 3000)

In the Adobe applications, Illustrator and Indesign I do not get a custom imagesetter resolution setting but instead a set resolution (eg) 133/1800, 150/1800, 133/2400, 150/2400 etc.

When I make a ps file at say 133/1800, load the 1800dpi driver on the imagesetter and then print the job, it fails. I've tried numerous times checking I havent set up anything else that might conflict and at various resolutions with no success.

Is there some way to rectify this or known conflicts that would reject a job even if its set at the correct resolution in the host program?

Is there a way to set custom screen rulings in Illustrators (or Indesigns) print dialogue box (or any box ?

 

[apepp]

...what resolution and linescreen is the RIP set to?

...are you selecting postcript level 2 as the format from the indesign applications?

...1800 dpi with linescreen of 133 gives 184 grey levels, better would be 2400 at 150 which gives 257 grey levels (maximum level for postcript level 2 is 256), the target for good grey levels is as near to 200 greys as possible, but linescreen values can be governed by what type of paper you print on...

...the formula for this is (output resolution / linescreen) 2 squared + 1...

...i know some who run a 2400 dpi device at 200 lpi +, which actually/technically isn't designed to be used at such a linescreen...

...postcript 3 has 4096 grey levels...

...but anyway, i digress slightly...

...the adobe applications take the optimized combination from the PPD file so there is no customised values allowed, which isn't a bad thing really...

...check your setting is postscript level 2 in your print set up to begin with...

Andrew

 

[mezzi5]

Thanks apepp, since the first trials I've had the print prefs set to ps level 2.

I need to be able to rip at all screens/lpi's. As a thumb suck, most common are 133, 150 and 175 @ 1800dpi.

Thanks for the formula's.

It seems to be working now although I'm not totally convinced with the way the PPD rotates and handles long edge/short edge first although I can control the job rotation from the RIP end...the working method was to ensure the printer FT-3050 and ppd are the same in the adobe print dialog box - it initially defaulted to FT-3050 in the ppd box and postscript file in the printer box.

I'm continuing testing as I still had an error message pop up - something like "error - cannot rip with on-host methods. This appears to be on the black plate and knocks out all other plates".
I understand this to mean the black is not overprinting (however I do not want the black to overprint.)
To reiterate, I am definately using ps level 2.

Mac side works fine as the os9 and osx driver are the same. The Macs are only used for Quark 7.3, Freehand and Acrobat Pro 7 jobs.
I've got 3 different setups from the 2 different Win drivers between win98, win98se+unoffic.sp1 and winxp :{ They do have the same settings though, just different layouts. The Illustrator/Indesign/AdobeCS3 jobs are all coming from the Windows XP machine.