Avantra & Apogee Help

[JohnW123]

Hi there.

We currently bought an Agfa SelectSet 30 OLP with Apogee PDF Series 2. The engineer who installed the RIP set it up using Hot Folders, the problem is that it converts all our spot colours to CMYK, so we have to split the file from Process Colours & Pantone colours, which isn't ideal

So we tried to use AppleTalk on our Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and use a PPD file to control things like screening lpi etc. the problem with this is, the Mac can see the printer etc but when we actually "print" the job nothing happens? no error messages the print dialog box dissapears.

If anyone could tell me exactly how to do this from start to finish, I'd really appreciate it as I am obviously going wrong somewhere.


Thanks again.

 

[gicbelgium]

Hi there.

We currently bought an Agfa SelectSet 30 OLP with Apogee PDF Series 2. The engineer who installed the RIP set it up using Hot Folders, the problem is that it converts all our spot colours to CMYK, so we have to split the file from Process Colours & Pantone colours, which isn't ideal

So we tried to use AppleTalk on our Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and use a PPD file to control things like screening lpi etc. the problem with this is, the Mac can see the printer etc but when we actually "print" the job nothing happens? no error messages the print dialog box dissapears.

If anyone could tell me exactly how to do this from start to finish, I'd really appreciate it as I am obviously going wrong somewhere.


Thanks again.

Hi John,

Many people can help you here.

But we must know the version of Apogee... PC or MAC ?

 

[JohnW123]

Sorry about that

It is the PC version. Apogee PDF RIP Series 2 v1

Thank you

 

[Jim-CompuDoc]

Appletalk would have nothing to do with this. Avoid it if you can.

What is preventing you from using the ppd, and "printing" a pdf file to the hot folder?
To control your separations, use "inrip separation" rather than "composite cmyk" when you print out of indesign.

You do need to have the avantra / apogee installed as a printer with the correct ppd

 

[JohnW123]

Jim,

I have done all of the above, the printer is now set up & printing.

The final problem im facing and cant seem to get round is the making of a custom sized plate within Agfaset

I have edited the basic.edf file which contains the custom size & generated a PPD file from this. the custom size is in the PPD as I can see it when opening with wordpad to view the content. I have over written the original PPD file that was installed when setting up the printer, But the "custom size" doesn't appear in the printers drop down menu?

Any ideas on this?

 

[claude72]

So we tried to use AppleTalk on our Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)...

No way using AppleTalk with SnowLeopard, as this OS no more handled AppleTalk protocol...

 

[JohnW123]

No way using AppleTalk with SnowLeopard, as this OS no more handled AppleTalk protocol...

Agreed Claude.

We are now using Windows 2000 to print. only issue is the custom size within the PPD file

 

[claude72]

When I was in this job, I used an Avantra 25 with an Apogee serie2 RIP: the RIP was running on a PC with Windows 2000 Server and the Macs I used for DTP and to send the jobs were running under OS 10.3, or 10.4 or 10.5 or 9.22.
Of course, my situation was not the same as yours, as I could use AppleTalk to print, althought you cannot use it with your 10.6...

... but in many cases I preferred send manually .PS files from the Mac to the hot-folder of the Apogee, using a TCP/IP network between the Mac and the PC... this method don't use the AppleTalk network, and so should works under OS 10.6.

But, whatever the method I used, I never had problem to separate a spot colour nor to setup a custom "plate" size??? (but sometimes, a custom plates setting outputs with a 90° orientation error!!!???)

Concerning the spot colour converted in CMYK: are you sure that the engineer who installed the RIP did not link a setup file to the hot-folder with an InRIP separation activated?

Concerning the custom plate issue: what PPD do you use? are you sure that you use the PPD generated by the RIP itself?

Anyway, you also have to be aware that the Apogee serie 2 is an outdated RIP, originaly made to work with Quark 4 or 5 under OS 9, having it last upgrade for OS 10.1... and then its behaviour is sometimes strange with recent OS and softs, depending of the version of the OS and versions of the DTP softs... and each upgrade fixed some issues but brought some more problems... for example, InDesign CS1 with OS 10.3 had some orientation's issue with custom plates, CS3 with

 

[claude72]

When I was in this job, I used an Avantra 25 with an Apogee serie2 RIP: the RIP was running on a PC with Windows 2000 Server and the Macs I used for DTP and to send the jobs to print were running under OS 10.3, or 10.4 or 10.5 or 9.22.
Of course, my situation was not the same as yours, as I could use AppleTalk to print, althought you cannot use it with your 10.6...

... but in many cases I preferred send manually .PS files from the Mac to the hot-folder of the Apogee, using a TCP/IP network between the Mac and the PC... this method don't use the AppleTalk network, and should works under OS 10.6.

But, whatever the method I used, I never had problem to separate a spot colour, nor to setup a custom "plate" size???

Concerning the spot colour converted in CMYK: are you sure that the engineer who installed the RIP did not link a setup file to the hot-folder with an InRIP separation activated?

Concerning the custom plate issue: what PPD do you use? are you sure that you use the PPD generated by the RIP itself?


You also have to be aware that the Apogee serie 2 is an outdated RIP, originally made to work with Quark 5 under OS 9, having it last upgrade for OS 10.1...
... and then its behaviour is sometimes strange with recent OS and softwares, depending of the version of the OS and versions of the DTP softs... and (as often in computing) each upgrade fixed some issues but brought some more problems... for example :
- InDesign CS1 with OS 10.3 had some orientation's issue with custom plates (sometimes, a custom plates setting outputs with a 90° orientation error!!!???),
- CS3 with OS 10.4 worked quite fine,
- CS4 with OS 10.4 had issues with separations naming and handling (a CMYK job outputted with a cyan plate and 3 grays plates, previewing 3 plates : the first plate was a mix of cyan and magenta, but magenta was gray... and yellow was also gray!!!),
- CS4 under OS 10.5 did no more handle the mirror printing option of the PPD (and some other PPD's options were ignored)...

... so, don't expect that everything will work fine using an OS 10.6!!!