Art set up for Douthitt CTS

[1964GN]

In house set up and training will be Monday afternoon and Tuesday. Yesterday I spent some time on the phone with Mark Diehl going over the Xitron rip but still have a few questions.
We had a little difficulty with one of my files. It was a full back 10 color sep in PS. I saved it as a PDF and when I dropped in the rip it took a quite while to process. When I placed it in AI and drop the AI file in the rip it processed much faster. I am wondering what is working for you? Most of our seps are in spot channels in PS. Should I be setting these up in AI, or some other way?

[DannyGruninger]

We have a template setup in illustrator that all of our files get placed into. So if we have a psd sim process job we save out of psd as dcs2.0 then place on our illy template. We then save as to our rip hot folder as an .ai file. The file then goes through the rip and lands into the que on the cts. It’s actually an amazing workflow for us here.

[Homer]

We use the Xitron rip too, we print to a .ps file and drag and drop into Xitron, works great.

[1964GN]

Danny: Mark had suggested that a DCS 2.0 file wasn't optimal. I wondered why but he never explained it. How is your AI template set up?

Homer: What do you mean by "print to a .ps file"? I don't see .ps as an option i the print dialog? Do you mean "save as"?

[mk162]

If Danny says it works..I'd roll with that.

We did something a little backwards, I put the file through the rip to test it out and it worked great.  I ran the PDF from PhotoShop through the RIP, then took the TIFF files into corel and added registration marks.  Just to see what would happen.  The job turned out amazing.  I had to recut 5 of the screens since i didn't like the colors.  Didn't even need the marks...oh well.

I've been having trouble importing a DCS EPS or whatever it is into Corel recently.  The files get really jacked up.

A .ps file is a postscript file usually from "print to file."  We use them out of Corel for our spot color and simple halftone jobs.  Simprocess is run through Photoshop.  The screens of the Douthitt are killer.  I mean, just stunning.  We did a 4cp on darks the other day and you had to look to find the dots at 65lpi.  The design wasn't flawless, but it was good enough to run.  If I would have had more time from the customer I would have worked on it a bit more.

[1964GN]

Set up and testing today went well. Save the psd as a pdf and bam. I am really going to love this thing

[ZooCity]

We have a template setup in illustrator that all of our files get placed into. So if we have a psd sim process job we save out of psd as dcs2.0 then place on our illy template. We then save as to our rip hot folder as an .ai file. The file then goes through the rip and lands into the que on the cts. It’s actually an amazing workflow for us here.

With or w/out CTS we do the same.  We quit using DCS and simply place .psd files in illy and output.  If you prefer multichannel for the color mode you'll have to stick with DCS of course.

[mk162]

Set up and testing today went well. Save the psd as a pdf and bam. I am really going to love this thing

Yes, yes you are.  It was a little clunky at first.  I liked the output on iblock from M&R, but this actually makes it easier for the screen tech to do their job.  All they have to do is pair the image with the right mesh and they are off to the races.

[1964GN]

Exposure times are way down too with the NOVAC. From close to 2 minutes down to 10-12 seconds. We have about 60 screens to do today so we should be able to get it all dialed.