Design w/ Mac

[chuckh]

Greetings! I am brand new to the forum and actively researching in order to enter the digital printing industry. How many of you design on a Mac and then send files to your printer/cutter? What issues have you found and are they easily overcome? Thank you in advance.

[Mod-Zel]

We've been an all Mac shop since 89. In the "old" days we used Signpost as a bridge program to cut with. A number of years ago Graphtec started providing an Illustrator plug in called Cutting Master to drive their plotters which works great and you don't have to leave Illy to cut.

Back in 99 Gerber also offered a Illustrator plug in called MacImprint to drive their Edge printer and their plotters. Unfortunately, they haven't updated it since the Illy 10 version. I still use it and it's so much simpler to use than Omega it's absurd that it's never reprogramed for Illy CS. I blame this on abysmal dealer support in a top heavy PC environment, (Advantage Sign Supply exempted from this statement), but this is a too long story.

Right now I have broken down and am running my PosterJet RIP on Windows XP via Parallels on my MacPro, (The Mac version of PosterJet is still in development at this time). I'm printing on my HP5000 and my HP9000s using this arrangement. This is working OK except for some occasional USB connection issues in windows.

The great thing is that after I print my job on the 9000, I can register and cut on my Graphtec 7000-100 via Cutting Master again.

Hopefully, PosterJet will get things finished and I can get back to totally Mac again.

[bpatrick3]

I do all my design work on a Mac. I write postscript files to a networked windows xp computers I then add the postscript file into Versaworks and print away, I do the same thing with my HP Design jet except I add the postsript file to Amible PhotoPrint Server and then print away

[M.A.C.]

Design on Mac, rip and print from Win,

Love it