All Adobe products have a built in RIP that allows them to print to non-postscript inkjet printers wonderfully well.
This is something I didn't expect, nice bonus from owning Illustrator! So I don't need to worry that when I print from illustrator my vector lines don’t appear pixelated, because illustrator translates the postscript language fully to the printer?
And, I can forget the Canon drivers that come with the IPF8400 because I won't be needing them if my printing is done from Illustrator?
You'd only need a RIP if you needed the extra large print size support, tiling, nesting, or workflow options.
Sorry for asking as I should probably search but a bit lazy, but what is nesting and tiling? And extra large print size, is that ridiculously big, ie well in excess of 44" width
Just print from Illustrator. Select and resize the artwork as required.
can I just resize from the Print dialogue and leave the artwork in the document untouched and unscaled? I will check it out, thanks!
I would add this to 2: Use RGB description of the colors in Illustrator and make sure your color settings are correct.
Thankfully I did get this correct, I have set up the Document Color Mode in RGB for all my Illustrator files and also all the color swatches as RGB as well. I remember reading that when printing to an inkjet that it needs RGB files because the printer likes to convert it itself, but in offset press files needs to be cmyk.
To sRGB converted for the web and kept in AdobeRGB for the archive and print
I didn't know this, I have never paid attention, do i check this option when saving? Can you explain a little more? does the sRGB make the colors more predictable so that what a person sees on their monitor would possibly be the closest that they will receive in their print? (high wishes I know)
And only vectorise if the design aims at hard-edge or related.
The type of artwork is done with marker and pens onto paper so the hard edge is part of the style of the image, and is what makes it. I love the vector format, but it does have limitations and needs to be kept simple with the emphasis on original hand made shapes with simple flat color and the limited use of gradients. too many gradients makes it look cheap. It's hard to get texture with vectors so I concentrate on the use of shape, color and simplicity, with a twist of humour sometimes. Vector must be FUN and not too serious because vectors have the potential to be 'scary'.
If vectorised you have to think of a proper WEB vector format too and the issues of the color space then. It usually ends in a compromise of an RGB JPEG with sRGB assigned.
hmm a vector web format, like the sound of it. I was currently along the lines of the JPEG for the website gallery display, this is what visitors would see and buy based on. It would be watermarked of course. The web gallery software I have bought and will use to set up is Stockboxphoto.
The rest at print time has been answered though I would go through Photoshop as a last check on colors and set the printer's preferred input resolution 300 or 600 PPI as the resolution for rasterisation. Of course the last can be done with a Tiff export from Illustrator too
with the Photoshop check, is this just opening/rasterizing the Illustrator artwork into Photoshop and eyeballing the colors in there, but still printing from Illustrator to the Inkjet?
Thanks all for your help, invaluable!
looking at printers yesterday and came across a Canon cashback deal for the IPF8400 of 2K, for the next month. I will end up paying $8200 in AU. I think it's still quite expensive compared to US pricing but that's normal. They came down from $11900 to $10200 and then the 2K cashback on that. If I buy from this particular supplier they will give me trade pricing on the media (which I assume is paper but also ink? will have to double check with them).