Photoshop instead of RIP

[spiffingprints]

Hi there, I do a bunch of printing but it doesn't warrant me forking out thousands on a RIP just yet. I have used Qimage but I'm not getting great results with my colours. I'm wondering if anybody has any experience using Photoshop to print large jobs? I get great results from Photoshop but it means I need to open each image print manually. I think I can set an automation and run that as a batch but it won't account for placing placing image on a sheet of paper together, for instance 4 A4 images on 24" roll.

Does anybody have any experience with this and know if it's possible set Photoshop up to run in a similar way to Qimage?

Thanks

 

[Slammer]

Surprisingly you can use Photoshop as a RIP as long as your imager eats Tiff´s, even seperations are possible, at least it was waaay back in the heady days of the 90ties. DCS was not too shabby if I remember.

 

[Joe]

What kind of files are you printing? Please don't say PDF's!

 

[spiffingprints]

What kind of files are you printing? Please don't say PDF's!

They're all jpegs.

 

[Danny Whitehead]

What kind of printing?

 

[Danny Whitehead]

Ah, looks like short run, large format inkjet fine art reproductions. Is that right? If that's the case, it sound like it might be imposition software you need more than a RIP.

I think people might have assumed offset litho or screenprinting, and using Photoshop to generate final, 1-bit separations.

 

[spiffingprints]

Ah, looks like short run, large format inkjet fine art reproductions. Is that right? If that's the case, it sound like it might be imposition software you need more than a RIP.

I think people might have assumed offset litho or screenprinting, and using Photoshop to generate final, 1-bit separations.

That's the stuff yeah, just standard wide format inkjet printing. The easiest way I've had is to just use the Epson drivers but you have little control over colour. Photoshop is great but you can only do one image at a time and all positioning is manual. Qimage is becoming a hasstle and I'm not getting the right results with colour but the facility to auto-space things on the roll of paper is great.

I've had a look at things like Onyx work for what I need but they all cost a total bomb. I don't know what imposition software is. Is there anything you can recommend?

 

[arossetti]

I don't understand your workflow completely.

How do you or how would you linearize your printer?

 

[Danny Whitehead]

I'm not really au fait with imposition for wide format, but I'm sure there's plenty of folk here who are. Sounds like your other issue is colour management. Do you have anything in place in that regard - custom media profiles, conversion policies and the like?

 

[spiffingprints]

I'm not really au fait with imposition for wide format, but I'm sure there's plenty of folk here who are. Sounds like your other issue is colour management. Do you have anything in place in that regard - custom media profiles, conversion policies and the like?

I create my own profiles with i1profiler and my X-Rite basic pro 2. The profiles I have created work well within Photoshop so I know they are fine, they just aren't working so great in Qimage, though I am requesting assistance through their forums. Just hoping someone knows of another approach. From what google told me about impositioning that seems to be what I need, a method to use colour profiles and automatically imposition on a roll of paper.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

You could look into Mirage for a “lite” solution:

http://mirage.dinax.de/New_Features.html

For Mac users, there is FitPlot:

http://www.fitplot.it

While at the higher end there is Griffin from Tilia Labs:

http://tilialabs.com/griffin.html

And I hate to mention it, however a WUNDES Illustrator script can very roughly “lay out” placed images, then you could tidy up the edge alignment for trimming etc:

http://www.wundes.com/JS4AI/distributeStackedObjects.jsx


However I would personally recommend a “proper” wide format RIP, as hacks cost money in the long run.



Stephen Marsh

 

[Slammer]

Ah, looks like short run, large format inkjet fine art reproductions. Is that right? If that's the case, it sound like it might be imposition software you need more than a RIP.

I think people might have assumed offset litho or screenprinting, and using Photoshop to generate final, 1-bit separations.

Yes, that was my first thought, dunno, has anybody tried using PS as a RIP this side of the 21st century?

 

[Danny Whitehead]

I vaguely remember such practices in the 90s, but couldn't remember how it was done, so I couldn't resist trying. I opened a PDF in PS at 1200ppi, duplicated each channel to a grayscale document, changed the mode to bitmap, halftone, 150lpi and assigned the angles, duped them back into a CMYK file. The results were surprisingly sort of OK. I expected it to soften the edges of vectors, but it didn't.

 

[Joe]

I vaguely remember such practices in the 90s, but couldn't remember how it was done, so I couldn't resist trying. I opened a PDF in PS at 1200ppi, duplicated each channel to a grayscale document, changed the mode to bitmap, halftone, 150lpi and assigned the angles, duped them back into a CMYK file. The results were surprisingly sort of OK. I expected it to soften the edges of vectors, but it didn't.

Just opening the PDF in PS would have rasterized all of your text and vectors but at 1200 dpi would still look fairly sharp. Then you lose the soft edge when you convert to bitmap.

 

[Danny Whitehead]

Yeah, I expected the converting to halftone bitmap step to do what the 'colour halftone' filter does - make a bunch of round dots with no regard for the edges. It actually keeps the edges like an actual RIP does.

 

[pacart]

Why not place your images into an indesign file and print from there? It handles all kinds of file types without needing to rasterize or change in any way. It also has features that could be akin to imposition software or you could even find or write your own scripts to impose. Just a thought.

 

[Schnitzel]

Yeah, I expected the converting to halftone bitmap step to do what the 'colour halftone' filter does - make a bunch of round dots with no regard for the edges. It actually keeps the edges like an actual RIP does.

The algorithms are different: the "Color Halftone" filter takes an area of the image, averages its value and draws a circle with a size proportional to that averaged value. The bitmap conversion does actual halftoning using a point-process method (one pixel at a time) and a halftone screen matrix. That's why it can generate partial halftone dots and keep sharp edges.
One problem with it, however, is the low accuracy of the resulting screen ruling and angle. Superimposing 4 separations will show you severe moiré and rosette center shifting.

Also, for some mysterious reason, Photoshop cannot rasterize PDFs to more than 32,000 pixels at a side. It can, however, open such images or resize existing ones to larger sizes.

 

[Slammer]

The algorithms are different: the "Color Halftone" filter takes an area of the image, averages its value and draws a circle with a size proportional to that averaged value. The bitmap conversion does actual halftoning using a point-process method (one pixel at a time) and a halftone screen matrix. That's why it can generate partial halftone dots and keep sharp edges.
One problem with it, however, is the low accuracy of the resulting screen ruling and angle. Superimposing 4 separations will show you severe moiré and rosette center shifting.

Also, for some mysterious reason, Photoshop cannot rasterize PDFs to more than 32,000 pixels at a side. It can, however, open such images or resize existing ones to larger sizes.

I found that the moire was not that much of an issue, having said that I seem to remember that in some cases however I did use a line screen.
Methinks this method is screaming out for a revival, motto...: "The way forward... back to the nineties!"

 

[spiffingprints]

Hi, I'm really not even sure if i need to resterize my files for print. I think all I need is the ability to use automated imposition and use ICC profiles easily. Now upon spending hours getting prints with blotchy colours in Qimage I have come to the conclusion that my issue is just with the ICC profiles I've been creating. I'm not having issues with the standard Epson ICC profiles but the ones that I make are sometimes coming out fine and sometimes coming out with loads of clipped/blotchy colours.

I wonder if someone can tell me if it sounds like I've been doing the right thing when making the profiles?

I'm using an X-rite i1 basic pro2 with X-rite i1profiler.
I have selected RGB because I'm printing through Qimage.
Standard size colour chart with I think 2133 patches.
Leaving everything at default after that, saving as version 4 profile.
Then just creating the profile, saving it and using it.

Any ideas where I might be going wrong?

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Yes, your images are already raster. A WF RIP is doing a lot more than just rasterizing non raster content. Yes, some sort of nesting and colour management would indeed be helpful. As for your ICC question, you could try creating a v2 ICC from the same data and compare to the v4 using the same output settings and workflow.


Stephen Marsh