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Caldera Graphics’ VisualRIP for MAC OS X

Caldera’s Windows® alternative

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Sometimes you just need to go against the flow. Our shop included a traditional Windows®-based network of computers, printers and vinyl cutters. Our shop is on a small ranch in the country. Although it’s a wonderful lifestyle, it presents challenges.

For example, a dial-up Internet connection serves as our lifeline to the outside world. This greatly limits our ability to upload the daily barrage of operating-system and virus updates. After we ignored a recent virus alert, we were promptly infected. The significant grief pushed us to look for alternatives.

Our solution was to purchase a new Apple Macintosh to use as an Internet/e-mail portal. Macintosh has never had a critical virus attack, so we felt that the expense justified avoiding the heartache of losing a key system for an extended length of time. So, you may ask, how does this concern signmaking?

Well, this exercise pushed us to think about alternatives for signmakers who want to escape the Windows-only world. Remember, the Mac isn’t the only alternative operating system. Many businesses are turning to Linux as a viable alternative to Windows servers or workstations.

The inexpensive Linux software can be installed on as many systems as you desire. The catch, of course, is that you need to be fairly proficient in Linux to properly install and configure a system. If you have, or can acquire, this knowledge, the reward is a bulletproof system that’s much safer and cheaper to maintain than Windows.

This idea intrigued us, so we obtained a copy of the Caldera printing-solution software. For many years, Caldera, a French company, has specialized in Macintosh high-end, digital-printing solutions. They sent us a copy of their software for evaluation. Because we just bought the new Mac, it seemed like a natural fit.

The VisualRIP family

Caldera offers six different printing solutions that can cover most digital-printing needs. Rather than cover all six, we’ll describe the three product families. The entry-level products, which fall into the Copy family, allow you to perform scan-to-print, scan-to-file and scan-to-PDF functions. These products are primarily positioned for reproduction shops.

The mid-range product line, the VisualRIP family, supports wide-format, digital printers. The VisualRIP family members are essentially the same base product with additional features. The big brother of the family is GrandRIP+. This product supports the features of VisualRIP, but also supports many grand-format printers.

All of the products in the family are supported on Mac OS X (up to 10.4, aka Tiger), Mandriva Linux 10, Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 2.5.x (or higher), and SGI Irix 6.x or higher. Some of these industrial-strength systems offer outstanding performance. In most signshops, Mac OS is the most common alternative system, so that’s what we chose to review at length. Let’s take a look at VisualRIP for Mac OS X.

Installation

As we mentioned, this seemed like a great way to christen our new Macintosh. We received an evaluation copy of the Caldera software and decided to install and test

VisualRIP because this would be a fairly typical choice for shops with digital-printing capabilities. Our system met the minimum recommended configuration of 1GB RAM, a G5 processor, more than 20GB disk space and Mac OS X.

Simple and advanced installation methods are available. To keep things easy, we chose the simple method. We were prompted for the software package we were loading. Then we answered questions concerning our system and the devices to support (Fig. 1). The whole installation took less than 10 minutes.

After the installation, we logged out of the admin” account and could see a new Caldera user was built. We logged into this environment and saw a new desktop that displayed numerous Caldera shortcuts. Now it was time to try the software.

VisualRIP in action

As a rule, we usually read instructions thoroughly before trying out any new software. In this case, we received a fairly small manual that mostly covered the software’s installation and configuration. We knew the documentation was loaded during the installation, but we decided to try to figure it out on our own.

We double clicked a desktop icon named “Caldera.” We immediately were presented with two windows. A vertical window on the left side of the screen comprised a working directory where images could be placed. The other window comprised all of the applications, tools and settings for the RIP.

From here, figuring out how things worked was pretty easy. You just double click an application-window button, and you’re presented with settings for the printer, workflow, etc. From the images window, you can perform numerous functions, such as picture display, minor retouching and file to print submission.

During installation, we selected an HP DesignJet 5500 as our printer. This device is on our local area network, and we only needed to supply the IP address. When we submitted a job to print, we could see the processing steps, a preview of the image and the image disposition after the job (Fig. 2).

This was all extremely intuitive; in most cases, you can use drag-and-drop to initiate such functions as printing. Changing the printer settings is easy as well. Double click the printer icon, and you’re presented with such options as resolution and media.

This sounds great if you intend to run all of the prints from the RIP system. But what if you have a room full of designers? What if there’s a mix of Windows and

PC systems? No need to worry. You can configure a hot folder to accept print jobs from other workstations. Because the RIP system will appear as a printer to the rest of the network, it’s fairly easy to locate and configure it on the workstations. You can also enable a web-based printing site on the system that allows users to transfer files to the system and even download the drivers needed on their workstation.

We’ve just scratched the surface on this product’s capabilities. The system settings, for example, can let you tune practically every aspect of the software (Fig. 3). Color calibration is also built into the system, via the EasyMedia Lite function. You can tie the monitor, scanner and printer together through a menu-driven wizard.

Purchase the full version of EasyMedia to extend capabilities to create your own ICC profiles. The VisualRIP+ package also adds sophisticated tiling and automatic-layout options to the base package. VisualRIP can support multiple printers with the queues residing on different systems.

Caldera provides easy-to-use, fully loaded software that addresses the Mac OS X-, Unix- and Linux-based platforms. The product can handle the grand-format work of a copy shop or signshop. The use of hot folders lets any user in the shop utilize all functions: PC, Mac, Linux Mandrake, SUN, SGI Irix or a mix. Several thousand ICC color profiles also come standard. It’s fast and complete — an alternative to Windows-based offerings.

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