Special Printing Issues for Desktop Publishing Applications

The interaction of desktop publishing software with printers is an area of software design that has vast room for improvement. Unfortunately, each application and each printer has its own special quirks and these all vary depending on whether you are using a mac or a PC. Here are some tips that may help you use these programs to print on the GSD's printing systems.

This document covers tips from observations made by students and staff at the GSD. This documentation is not intended to substitute for the software manuals, or the application's on-line help. In order to print to any of the color printers at the GSD, you must first understand the basics of how the GSD printing system works. Find these details in the section Color Plotting.

Topics Covered in this Document:

Special problems of printing from desktop applications
Photoshop hints
Quark hints
Illustrator hints
Pagemaker hints
Quark hints

Special problems of printing from desktop applications:

Desktop publishing applications are complex because they are designed for a very wide range of people with different needs. Being a Quark, PageMaker or Illustrator expert is a qualification that is worth money in the marketplace because mastering these programs requires painful experience (including reading manuals!.) Here are some of the issues that these programs have in common:

Redundant settings for page size and layout parameters: Typically, there are two places to enter page size and layout parameters: the "Document Setup," and the Printer Properties. Typically you want everything to agree in both of these places, but between certain applications and printer drivers, it has been noticed that the Landscape-Portrait switches may counteract each other. If you seem to have a problem with rotation, try keeping the the printer-properties set to "Portrait."
Multiple Resolution Options for Image Files: page layout people are not always interesting at working at full resolution. For the purpose of scooting pictures around and seeing what they look like, the default presentation mode for most publishing packages is LOW RESOLUTION. The various applications have different ways of switching between low and high-res modes, these will be discussed below. Sometimes, the application can lose touch with the high-res version of the image in question. When this happens, you may need to delete the problem image or images and place them again. Of course, it should go without saying, that if you have "placed" or "linked" images into your document, that these images will need to travel with the document if you move it into another directory or disk.
Scratch Disks: Applications create temporary files while they are working. You typically need a lot of scratch space when transforming documents, running out of scratch can be problematic. Quark and Illustrator let you specify where the scratch files are kept, Pagemaker and the RTL Plotter Driver require you to have lots of space available on the C: drive. If you notice odd behavior related to missing pieces of your document or only low-resolution previews being included, make sure you have plenty of scratch space.
Nested File Format Problems: Desktop publishing programs often contain nested sub-documents: image files and an occasional encapsulated postscript (EPS) file. These nested files usually look fine when you look at them in the application. Occasionally, an included file may not look right on your print. This sort of symptom occurs when the application imbeds the file into the print-file -- the app has no problem with the foreign format, but the printer does. Such problems are solved by taking the imbedded file and changing its format -- by opening it in Photoshop, and converting it with Save As, for example.
Printing Large Format Files: Difficulties increase exponentially with the size of your document. Some applications have limitations on document dimensions, others apps require odd rituals to set custom sizes, these are covered in the application-specific sections below. Here are some general tips:
1. You should not use images that have resolution higher than you need. To do so is basically like throwing your time and hard-drive space and memory in the garbage. Before making large documents, try some small tests to see how high your resolution can get before it stops making any difference. You will be surprised at how much time (money, sanity, disk space, memory) this little test will save you!
2. Consider producing your document at a modest size, and using the HP-RTL driver to scale the document up to your final document size. This is accomplished in the printer properties: set the "Application Page Size" to your modest original size, and then set the "Scale Factor" or the "Fit this Page" fields appropriately.
When all else Fails: When rationality and science cease to produce results, here are a few tried and true solutions for unexplainable problems:
1. Start a fresh, empty document: Set up the page and printer setups, cut the contents out of your problem document and paste it in the fresh one.
2. Change Platforms: Your application won't seem to print from a mac? Try printing from a PC! This may be against your religion, but we aren't asking you to WORK on a PC. Do your design on your mac, then just print from a PC. This may change your luck.
3. Process the file a few times, and take the largest size: If your plot keeps coming out half blank, or not at all, particularly if it is a large plot, particularly if it is from an Adobe product and particularly if it is RTL, try this: "Print" the file a few times from the application (before you move the file into plottmp) and name it something different each time. Then check the size of each of the files, and put the largest one into plottmp and plot it. Adobe products seem to not entirely process a file the first time, and doing it repeatedly will often get it to process the whole file. Is this stupid? yup. Does it work? yup. Blame Adobe.

Application Specific Tips:

Adobe Photoshop

The key to plotting from Photoshop is to use the Print with Preview command.

(Note: Even Print with Preview gets problematic with plots that are more than 100 inches long.)

Make sure you’ve flattened your layers.
Use the Print with Preview command (File>Print with Preview) instead of Print
This will bring up the Print Preview dialog box
Click on Page Setup
This will bring up the Page Setup dialog box.
Click on the Printer… button.
This will bring up the Page Setup Printer dialog box.
Choose HP Design Jet RTL from the pull down printer list. (Check to see if you have installed the HP Design Jet RTL driver if it does NOT show up on the pulldown list.)
Click on Properties... this will bring up the HP Design Jet RTL properties dialog box.
Select your layout and paper size. (Be sure to specify paper roll and 36 inch roll in the paper source and paper size windows.)
Click on Custom Sizes to specify an exact paper size.
Click on the Advanced tab and make sure In Computer is selected.
If you are satisfied with your selections – click OK on the HP Design Jet RTL properties dialog box.
Click OK on the Page Setup Printer dialog box.
The Page Setup dialog box should show your new page dimensions.
Click OK.
The Print with Preview dialog box should now show an actual preview of your document as it will be printed on the paper size you specified.
Click on Print.
This will again bring up the Print Dialog box with the HP Design Jet RTL already pre-selected.
Make sure the Print to File tick box is checked.
Click OK. This should bring up the Print to File dialog box.
Make sure you sent the print file to your local disk (e.g.- by typing c:\yourfile).
After the file is completed, copy the file to plottemp.

If the plotter doesn't print your whole image, or none of it, try saving a copy of your document and using "Image->Flatten Layers" before you print.

Adobe Illustrator

The Document Setup and Print Setup in Illustrator are closely linked. You have the option of selecting or deselecting the 'use print setup' option within the document setup. When you create a new document, the default setting is to have this clicked on, which means that whatever size and orientation you have set up in your default printer is used as the new document dimensions. Any changes you make under the print setup will be immediately reflected in the document setup. If you close the document and open it again having made changes to the default printer settings, the document will appear changed.

If you deselect the 'use print setup' option, you can make changes to the artboard dimensions and the printer page dimensions separately. This allows you to work on the document without worrying about changes to your printer settings. However, you may notice a difference between the document size and the print window shown on your screen. **Make sure to change the printer settings so that they correspond to your document before trying to print!!!!**

Plots greater than 36" long have been known to get cut off when using Illustrator. A more reliable way to generate plot files is to go through either Photoshop or Acrobat.

Make sure you’ve saved your Illustrator file with the "Create PDF compatible file" option checked. (Otherwise Photoshop or Acrobat may not recognize the file.)
Open up Photoshop and open your saved Illustrator file from the File>Open menu.
Follow the steps listed above. (Printing from Photoshop ).

PageMaker

Pagemaker won't let you choose a canvas size larger than 42 inches. If you want to go bigger, you will have to change your print properties as follows:
1. RTL: This is accomplished in the printer properties: set the "Application Page Size" to your modest original size, and then set the "Scale Factor" or the "Fit this Page" fields appropriately.
2. Postscript: select the appropriate scaling factor under 'print options.'
Pagemaker differs from both Illustrator and Quark in that the printer drivers need to be installed into the application as well as in the system folder of the machine. In the print dialog box, you will be asked to select both a "printer" and a "printer driver." Choices for "Printer" will be a choice among the printers in your chooser or windows printer control panel. Choices for "Printer Driver" will be a from among the PostScript Printer Descriptions that PageMaker was installed with. If you don't see an appropriate driver listed go to "update ppd" in the plug-ins menu to add the correct ppd. We hnave a set of PPDs for all of our printers in the public/software directory under "print."
Pagemaker has a limit on the maximum size of a text box -- 21 inches. If you want a text box bigger than this, see the notes on scaling a print file, above.

Quark

Quark has a limit of 48 inches on the size of a document. See tips on scaling when printing in the pagemaker tips section, above.
If you are having problems with the resolution of your images when printing from quark, go to the "Output" settings, and click on "Full resolution tiff output."