We’ve had our printer for a little less than a year now and we use the hell out of it. We got a pretty good system down for the small to medium size graphics and we are thrilled with the quality and the colors. But we are having problems with large, contour cut graphics. By large I mean 200 dpi or greater and 30”x lets say 150” We are using Corel Draw X3 and the VersaCamm. We are also using lots of effects like gradient fades, bitmap textures, drop shadows and so on. We can handle the large format stuff without the contour cut because we just export a .tiff or jpg and that seems to work great but when we need a contour cut we are forced to export it as either an .eps or to print directly from Corel to VersaWorks. But in order to do that we must first convert the whole graphic into a bitmap in Corel and then export it with the vector cut contour. We do that because of all the effects that we try to use either A: are just way to much for our computers to handle when we export them, or B: don’t turn out the way that we want them to.
So here is the problem: recently when we bring in the exported eps or the ps file into versa works we get an error saying the file is corrupt, plus this method is taking along time to do. Is there a better way to do this? (with what we have, a PC and Corel) Or, should we just simply not use as many effects. ….. Or, should we get used to hand cutting the large graphics. Hopefully we will solve these problems when we get new computers, but until then we are wasting a lot of time just trying to print larger vehicle graphics.
Posted by KARYN BUSH (Member # 1948) on :
i'm finding the same and i think its because my computer isn't what it needs to be. memory and speed is probably the culprit so the next one i'm getting is gonna have at least 4gig of memory. and the effects definitely play a huge part. i'd be interested to hear what the puter gurus think as i aint one.
Posted by Dan Antonelli (Member # 86) on :
Memory memory memory!!!
My laptop takes a while to rip some of these EPS files-- sometimes an hour or more depending on the size--- talked to Roland and they advised me that my little POS laptop (I hate these PCs!) needed more RAM. AT the time I bought the cheapest one possible.
Posted by Bill Modzel (Member # 22) on :
I hear you Dan. Fortunately, I have a Mac native rip on my 17" Powerbook, although it's still running in Classic mode. It will routinely chew up a 150MB file without a hitch. In fact, it takes longer for the HP to check it's printheads than it does to send the file info.
I sure do wish some of these big outfits like Roland would get their heads out of the sand and build some Mac RIPs.
Posted by Checkers (Member # 63) on :
Hiya Bill, More RAM may help and 2 to 4 gigs is ideal. It also helps to have a dual processor machine too. I have to question why are you designing files at such a high resolution? I printed a lot trade show displays and the highest resolution I would use was 150 DPI. For all of our work 100 DPI was more than acceptable when you consider that your typical display is viewed at 10 to 40 feet. Most banners and signs are viewed at a much greater distance.
Havin' fun,
Checkers
Posted by William DeBekker (Member # 3848) on :
Bill, One thing we did find out that helps with large photos and graphics is we do all our effects and designs in Photoshop and just apply the countour cut in Corel. Make sure you flatten your image in Photoshop and keep it RGB. And in Corel turn off all color management then export your EPS. Also when your in Colorip or Versaworks rip and print to your queues instead of the printer. Then Print from your Queue. This way it frees up a lot of your system resources as its not trying to rip and run the printer at the same time. We were having some of the same problems you are with our old machine as it wasn't powerful enough to do everything we wanted to do at the same time so my new machine is overkill. 2 duel core P4 3mhz with hyperthreading procs. (Equal to running 4 processors) 8 Gigs Ram 5 180gig sata3 300 drives running in a 5.1 Raid configuration. And a ATI x-something video card with 512Meg memory. All on a sesame seed bun. (Windows 2000) So we have no problem now.
Posted by Bill Diaz (Member # 2549) on :
Thanx, Bill!
Posted by William DeBekker (Member # 3848) on :
Also Bill After reading your Post again Design the real large Graphics at 1/2 or even 1/4 scale at 150 to 200 ppi then in colorip scale it up 200% or 400% this will save you massive amounts of Hardrive space and file sizes. A good average printable file should be around 26 to 30 Megs no more then 60 to 80 megs on a real large Projects. The days of 150 to 400 meg files are for the most part gone. Unless your doing HiRes Giclee' work.
This is a Wallpaper mural we are doing and its 6'x9' and the whole file size was only 39 megs at 600 ppi 8"x5' printed on the Roland at Medium 720x720 on Canvas Profile.
Posted by Doug Phillips (Member # 5708) on :
Great info Bill, (I was curious about this also)! Posted by Mike O'Neill (Member # 470) on :
I agree with Bill, simply select everything except the contour cut and flatten it. Big imagess I work in real size but will drop resolution to 100 dpi, or even 50 dpi for real big. I've sent tiled images as big as 16'x16' without problem.
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