Product

Platform

Operating system

Error

Symptoms

Some customers, especially book and magazine printers, want to make two-up, duplexed proofs from Prinergy, in the style of Digital Blueline. This capability is not in Prinergy 1.1. A feature like this is being developed for Prinergy 2.0, but won't be available for a while.

In the meantime, Prinergy VPS output is compatible with Digital Blueline, so DBLUE can be used to make these proofs.

Before you recommend DBLUE to the customer, see if they truly need it. We want to encourage customers to use Prinergy for all aspects of proofing. Work with the customer to see if they can get comfortable with loose page and imposed proofs from Prinergy, without involving DBLUE.

Cause

Solution

DBLUE SETUP

1. Add the Digital Blueline 1.2F SP2, or later, executable to the Prinergy system. A straightforward way is to the install the DBLUE package as is.

2. Configure NT Print Manager and a Digital Blueline template for the appropriate printer.

3. Also in the Digital Blueline template, on the General tab, change the item "Search for preview files with this extension" to "*.vps".

4. Depending on how fast Prinergy produces separations, you may have to increase the setting "Wait for N seconds with no activity in directory before printing" to 20 or 30 seconds. On the Print Options tab, you may have to check "Wait for missing separations" and enter the number of expected separations. But don't check this option unless DBLUE regularly starts to print before all separations have arrived.

5. Prinergy RIP settings and their effect in Digital Blueline. On the DBLUE Printer tab, you have two options for Black & White output of color jobs.

"Better quality" -- DBLUE prints correctly regardless of RIP screen angles and screen frequency. The RIP resolution must match the printer. For example, some colour printers have a resolution of 400 dpi; the RIP resolution must be set the same.

"Faster printing" -- DBLUE expects these RIP settings were used -- All screen angles at 45 degrees, screen frequency 53 or 106 lpi, resolution 300 or 600 dpi. These specific RIP settings are necessary so DBLUE can combine the color separations to make smaller and faster output to the printer. DBLUE cannot verify that correct RIP settings were used. If you use standard angles with this option, for example, DBLUE will still print, but the printed output will likely show moire and a washed out effect or even missing areas of color. If you use a different resolution, for another example, the printed output will likely show scaling artifacts, and white hairlines at regular intervals.

6. Start Digital Blueline and leave it running in hot folder mode (Go). DBLUE will print automatically as Prinergy puts VPS files in the hot folder.

PRINERGY SETUP

1. Make a copy of a VPS imposed proof process plan, and name it to indicate it is for DBLUE. Change the Device destination to the DBLUE hot folder. (A consequence of this is that VPS files from all jobs end up in the same folder.)

2. If the customer wants the DBLUE "Faster printing" option to be used, change the RIP settings in the process plan as indicated above.

3. Using DBLUE only makes sense for imposed proofs. Loose page proofs are better done entirely through Prinergy.

Permanent fix:

See also

Keywords

Digital Blueline, proofing

Technical contact(s)

Rob Prior

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