The Stylus Color 3000 is the second generation replacement for the Stylus Pro XL, Epson's previous high-end tabloid format color printer. We have run two Pro XL printers since early 1996 and while pretty slow, they produce excellent images for color comps, product mock-ups and a wide variety of other uses. These high resolution machines print better type and more detailed graphics than a laser printer and the color has good saturation. My clients prefer them over color laser prints.
The Stylus Color 3000 (SC3000) is an excellent piece of hardware. It addresses many of the shortcomings of the Pro XL. It has four large ink cartridges (one each for cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and the panel lights will warn you when you are getting low on an ink color. The printer has good paper handling. It can take sheet fed paper up to 17 by 22 inches and it can take a roll of 17 inch wide media. And best of all, it is very fast.
I have timed the SC3000 to be as much as 8 times faster than the Pro XL. Where the Pro XL took at least 40 minutes to image a 13 x 19 inch page, the SC3000 can do it in a little over 5 minutes. With this kind of speed the inkjet begins to compete with a color laser printer -- only with better images. Unfortunately almost all the speed gained in the printing hardware is lost in the new Epson StylusRIP that ships with the SC3000.
The Epson StylusRIP is based on the Adobe Configurable PostScript Interpreter (CPSI). In this respect Epson did it right, at least they did not try to cheap-out using a PostScript knock-off. But this is Epson's first attempt (to my knowledge) at such a RIP and it shows. The problems are:
Most of the people I know with the Pro XL/Birmy PowerRIP setup relegated an older workstation CPU to act as a dedicated RIP server. Since the RIP spent an enormous amount of time simply spooling out a job to the Pro XL it did not really need much power. So most people I know used an older PowerPC 601-based Mac.
In our shop, each printer that uses a software RIP has a dedicated computer running the software. In the case of the Stylus printers, the host computer is connected to our 10Base-T Ethernet LAN and the Stylus printer is connected to it via a serial cable. This is a very efficient way to arrange things as it keeps network traffic down. Generally, a job is generated on a workstation by creating a PostScript (PS) file and copying it to the hot folder (sometimes called a queue folder) where that printer's RIP is looking for jobs. (This is very important, and I will come back to it.)
I noticed immediately that the StylusRIP was somewhat slow, even on small files. But it becomes a real problem as the files get larger. I noticed this when printing a job that was fairly typical of our shop. The SC3000 had been working for over an hour and imaged only half the page. Something was wrong. This document became my test standard. It was a PageMaker 6.5 document that that took up most of the 13 by 19 page and contained some large CMYK TIFFs, some EPS vector art and several fonts. The PS file weighed in at 44 megabytes--a little over average but not unusual for the jobs we print.
Using my test file I ran the job on my existing Stylus Pro XL/Birmy PowerRIP combination. Then I ran it to the SC3000/StylusRIP on a similar PowerPC 601 computer. I was so amazed at how slow it was I added a PowerPC 604e-based machine to see what would happen. Below are my test results.
(The colored part of the bar represents the RIP time and the white area the imaging time. The numbers are minutes:seconds and state the time from when the RIP starts the job. The second number is the total time to RIP and image. Each RIP was set to make a spool file before imaging the page. While overall this may be slightly slower than otherwise, it allowed me to time the processes and evaluate RIP time separate from imaging time.)
Pro XL/Birmy PowerRIP running on Performa 6116 (PPC 601 at 60 MHz)
SC3000/Epson StylusRIP running on Mac 7100 (PPC 601 at 66 MHz)
SC3000/Epson StylusRIP running on Umax J700 (PPC 604e at 180 MHz)
Each machine was running only the PostScript RIP. The RIP had more than 32MB to itself.
As you can see, the Epson StylusRIP was incredibly slow. In fact, the 3 hour time is an estimate since the StylusRIP has no time logging capability and I had to leave the office after 2 hours and 40 minutes and only 80% if the progress bar done.
I called Epson technical support and they could not think of why the RIP time would be so long. They assured me that my results were not normal. After several calls, including two that were "elevated" to higher technical authority, it was determined that the RIP was functioning normally. I found this unacceptable and was considering returning the machine when a dealer I work with mentioned he had a "tip sheet" for the SC3000 he got from Epson. He faxed it to me.
The first tip was:
"Always use the StylusRIP in the Portrait Mode whenever possible. When
using the Landscape setting you may see longer print times. This is due
to Adobe PostScript's code. We are working on a way to speed this up. Remember,
you can install some media landscape in the SC3000 which will allow you
to use the Portrait mode for most files."
As luck would have it, my test file was actually the inside and outside of a small brochure positioned side-by-side for comping purposes. I repositioned them one on top of the other to make the test file a portrait image.
When I ran the tests this time I realized that the "tip" should have been called a "workaround". The numbers are below:
Pro XL/Birmy PowerRIP running on Performa 6116 (PPC 601 at 60 MHz)
SC3000/Epson StylusRIP running on Mac 7100 (PPC 601 at 66 MHz)
SC3000/Epson StylusRIP running on Umax J700 (PPC 604e at 180 MHz)
The StylusRIP's difference in RIP times between portrait and landscape images was staggering. While the Birmy PowerRIP takes almost twice as long to RIP the landscape job the StylusRIP took 5 to 7.7 times longer. But even if the landscape print times were not so bad, the StylusRIP still took over twice as long as the Birmy PowerRIP.
Not only is the StylusRIP slow -- it is defective. It is really too bad because it wastes an excellent opportunity presented by the fast hardware.
After nearly a month of using the SC3000/StylusRIP combination, I cannot get a fix on its color quality. Some printouts are nearly duplicates of their offset printed counterparts, other are not even close. I have discovered that you must print at 1440 dpi to get any good results.
On the Web there is no way to show examples of the inconsistencies I get, but when we have the opportunity, we always compare printouts from the SC3000 with final printed materials or a Matchprint. We will also compare a printout from the Pro XL. Although I am still in a quandary about the SC3000's color, I can tell you that the Pro XL, while never perfect, is much more consistent.
Before I finish with the Epson StylusRIP I need to point out that it has a terrible interface. I have worked with two software RIPS. The Birmy PowerRIP and the Agfa Viper. The Birmy cost about $200 and the Agfa cost about $15,000. (We do not know what part of the SC3000's $2,000 price the StylusRIP represents.) Of the two RIPs I use, the $200 Birmy has the best interface and the best job queue management abilities.
Both the Agfa and the Birmy use the Hot Folder method of queuing jobs. Remember above how I said we send PostScript files to the RIP over the network. This method allows several users to send jobs to the RIP without having to wait for any existing job to finish printing. The Agfa RIP has two folders: Hot and Normal. The oldest job in the Hot folder get taken as soon as the RIP is ready, if there are no jobs in the Hot folder then it looks for the oldest job in the Normal folder. Simple but effective job management.
The Birmy RIP has window that shows you job in line to RIP. You can prioritize them by moving them up or down in the print order. Very effective.
The Stylus RIP requires that you either print directly to the RIP over the network (like a laser printer) or you can drop a PS file onto the RIP application file. This causes the RIP to begin processing the file. But there are two problems with this: you can only drop one file at a time onto the RIP (it seems to ignore files dropped onto it while it is processing a job) and you cannot drop a PS file onto the running application over the network--the network says the file is busy.
Finally, both the Agfa and the Birmy RIPs have the ability to time stamp their actions in a window on screen and write the data to a log file. This includes error messages. A great help in troubleshooting a file that will not print.
It is obvious that Epson does not fully understand the graphics arts market. Although they seem to understand the market's pricing structure. The business version of this printer, though less capable, costs about $800. What Epson does not seem to understand is the graphic arts market need for high quality software that fits a smooth work flow. And if Epson tries to pretend the problem does not exist, as it seems to be doing now, the graphics arts market will walk away from the SC3000 regardless of how nice the hardware is.
One final note:
The last "tip" on the sheet from Epson stated "Only use the
StylusRIP driver when you need to output PostScript files. In most cases,
the standard driver is better and faster."
When do I need to output PostScript files? 100% of the time!
(BTW, Epson keeps referring to the StylusRIP as a driver, it is not a driver -- it is an interpreter. Drivers like PSPrinter, LaserWriter or PSCRIPT.DRV are used to access the printer through the RIP.)