Output to Color bureau
9 messages in this thread
I am the manager of a bureau that outputs Mac and PC files to a Canon CLC 500
colour copier. The results are excellent and we are really busy, but I have
never had any files from Amiga owners. From what I read some pretty excellant
graphics are produced on Amiga, so where do you go for your output?
I would like to try to output an Amiga graphics file but I need a little help;
a) What are the file formats you use ? Do you have the equivalent of the PC
.eps?
b) Is there a shareware utility for reading Amiga disks on a PC?
c) Can anybody supply an Amiga graphics file (preferably with text) for me to
try? I would send a successful output to you free of charge.
Thanks for your help
a) Amiga output usually goes to video tape <g> but for print, the
popular file formats are 24 bit IFF, EPS, and POSTSCRIPT. I've had
problems getting a Canon CLC printer to output my color postscript
files.
b) No. But Amigas can read and write MSDOS and MAC disks & syquest carts.
c) I have a color POSTSCRIPT file created in an Amiga DTP program
(PageStream) that I've had no luck at all in getting hardcopy of.
The publisher of the program has been useless in helping me find out
what the problem is. It prints fine when output to B&W, but bombs out
when sent to a Canon CLC… if you want to take a crack at it, I'll
EMail or snail mail it to you. Let me know.
Michael
You Amiga guys sure are a helpful lot, I have learnt a great deal from posting
this one message.
Thanks for the offer of the postscript file. I would love to have a go at
getting it out. If its not too big then e-mail it. If its getting on for the
humungus size then post maybe better. What ever is easiest for you.
My address is:
Wave Technology Ltd 104 Blackfriars Foundry 156 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8EN
GREAT BRITAIN
Thanks again. I'll be in touch
Jonathan Webb
Jonathan:
I don't do pro color output (amateur stuff at home, though). However,
there are Amigans out there who'd love to see more bureaus like your that
are sensitive to their needs. I've seen some service bureaus advertising
in the Amiga mags. Here in my city there is exactly one bureau that
welcomes Amiga format disks. For everyone else, if I want to get output I
need to use the Amiga's disk transfer utility to get them a useable file
on a MS-DOS disk. (CrossDOS, built into the Amiga OS).
My partner and I do B&W Postscript output on a laserjet for small jobs and
proofing big jobs. We can send the Amiga-generated PS files by modem or
disk to any service bureau. Amigas can handle standard and high density
3.5" disk formats plus just about any other disk format, e.g., Syquest,
Bernoulli, etc.
While Amigas can read and write PC, Atari and Mac disks, I know of no PC
or Mac utility that can read an Amiga-format disk.
One of my Amigas also has a Mac emulator board and we sometimes use Aldus
Pagemaker on it. So we can send out a disk from the Amiga in Mac format,
too. We send EPS files out from Amiga desktop publishing programs, too, as
I indicated. There are three top-of-the-line Amiga DTP packages that
handle Postscript, and they also will do full color separations. In fact,
Professional Page for the Amiga was the first software on any platform to
do color seps, and an earlier, now defunct package, Shakespeare, was the
first color DTP package on any platform. Pagestream currently may be the
top of the line in Amiga DTP. Both it and ProPage handle Pantone and are
equivalent to top of the line DTP packages on the Mac and PC.
There is a PC version of ProPage now, I believe, but I don't know if it
can read files created on the Amiga version. You'd have to ask Gold Disk.
Other Amiga packages like Art Department and Image Professional are
analagous to Adobe Photoshop. They include format converters to TIFF, PCX,
JPEG, GIF and other popular acronyms.
A few years there ago there was a Canadian-based Amiga magazine produced
entirely on Amigas, including most of the ads, with full color
separations. It was very slick. Alas, it's gone.
There are some PC programs that will read Amiga IFF files. Hijaak is one.
Graphics Workshop is another. Having them handy might be a service to
potential Amiga customers. I don't know of any PC programs, however, that
handle IFF-24. That's the IFF variant for 24-bit images (16.7 million
colors). But an Amiga-side package like Art Dept. should be able to
transform an IFF-24 into something a PC or Mac can read.
— Ron Legro from Milwaukee via AUTOPILOT
(The only way to fly)
Ron
Thanks for your reply. You have certainly opened my eyes to what an Amiga can
do. I do have Hijack which should be useful, and Photoshop should mean I can
take in tiffs etc.
Thanks again for your help.
Jonathan Webb
No problem. And don't hesitate to call if I can help again.
Hijaack is, I'm told, a bit flaky handling some formats, and Amiga IFF
apparently is one of them. I gather there is at least one other commercial
MS-DOS utility that handles IFF, but I can't recall its name. Deluxe Paint
II for the PC will read/write some Amiga Deluxe Paint IFF images — though
probably not the 4096-color or 256,000-color "HAM" modes. 256-color images
and lower should translate, though.
In case I didn't mention it, the JPEG 24-bit image format is now pretty
much a universal graphics format, along with GIF. There are numerous Amiga
utilities that import/export and read/write both. JPEG will be the storage
scheme of choice very shortly. It offers the advantage of extreme
compactness with good image quality retention, though it is a "lossy"
standard.
I also don't think I mentioned a low-tech solution to Mac-Amiga transfer
capability, namely a little plug and software combo called Mac-2-DOS. It's
about $100. With it, you plug a Mac floppy drive into the Amiga's external
drive port and load up a Laplink-type utility to move files to and from,
with full resource/data fork translation. Your Amiga customers might like
to know about that. However, as I said, the simplest fix is to have them
use the Amiga's internal CrossDOS utility to move their PS files over to a
MS-DOS disk.
Also, in case I didn't mention this, either: The Emplant board for the
Amiga will run any Mac software, including Adobe Photoshop in 256 colors
in a Macintosh window, multitasking under the Workbench on an Amiga 4000
at full speed. And the best part is, Emplant is only around $400 plus a
set of Mac ROMs (no pirating). A PCMCIA version will be out soon for the
Amiga 1200, and both versions shortly will have a 486DX emulation mode.
The best of three worlds, all in one box. See ya!
— Ron Legro from Milwaukee via AUTOPILOT
(The only way to fly)
In general response to the general issue of porting bitmaps to
the Macintosh (usually for imaging or other manipulation). Adobe
Photoshop (on the Mac) is very versatile in opening a wide variety of
foreign bitmaps (Amiga IFF, JPEG, TGA, etc.)
However, PhotoShop 2.5 DOES NOT compensate for the different
pixel aspect ratio (Amiga is rectanglar, and the Mac is square)
between systems. The result is that on the Mac, an Amiga bitmap
image, appears to be stretched appox. 115% on the horiz. plane. To
fix this, the image has to be resized with the horiz. at 85%.
Photoshop does a good job of doing this (Debabelizer by Equilibrium
Software also does a good job).
Of course you could also produce PostScript files on the Amiga,
and send them to the Mac for imaging (without any aspect ratio
problems), but PS files can get BIG (up to 3X size of original image)
and you really can't adjust for color or gamma with a PS file.
Anyone else, dealing with this problem?
Ernie V. @ PeeCee's Digital Imagery
I've transfered print res Toaster stuff to an LVT and IRIS most
succesfully using IFF24 on PC formatted Syquests read by Photoshop on a
Mac then converted for output.
I imagine an Emplant would make things much easier :^)
….John
A number of Amiga graphics and DTP packages let you resize a graphic
horizontally downward to compensate. e.g., Rend24 will even process
images in an auto-mode with this correction set as a default.
The reason the Amiga stuff is wider is because of its video emphasis.
I'm aware of folks who run Adobe Photoshop on their Amigas via a Mac
emulator, and move images in both directions on the same system. —
Ron Legro from Milwaukee via AUTOPILOT
(The only way to fly)