The wide world of color printing
Article Abstract:
Color printing of poster and billboard-size output is now available. Wide-format color ink-jet printers are becoming much more popular. Color ink-jet is best-suited for small volume, but these are relatively inexpensive and ideal for exhibits and displays. Electrostatic and thermal-transfer printers are also available to produce wide-format output, but can cost up to $100,000. An electrostatic printer is used for high-volume production. These devices print quickly using powder inks, and the output resists fading well. Thermal-transfer uses heat to melt CMYK wax colors on a transfer ribbon onto paper or other media. These too resist fading, and the printers are quiet and reliable. In buying a wide-format color printer, a customer should consider quality desired, cost factors and the quality of the controllers installed by the vendor. Other factors are the maximum printable area, the maker of the print engine and whether the output needs to be water-resistant.
Publication Name: Publish
Subject: Publishing industry
ISSN: 0897-6007
Year: 1995
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Get on board
Article Abstract:
Users should consider what their current graphics needs are before choosing a graphics accelerator from one of the six manufacturers building boards for Power Macintosh 8500 and 9500 computers. The boards range in price from $299 to $2,494 and support the display of high-resolution images with 24-bit color. They are also engineered for the 64-bit PCI bus. The 2MB of VRAM offered by the lower-priced boards are adequate to display 24-bit color on a 17-in or 21-in monitors at a standard resolution of 1,152x870 pixels. The high-end boards with 8MB of VRAM can support resolutions up to 1,920x1,080 pixels. The user should make sure that the board and the monitor support the same resolutions and choose the highest possible 24-bit resolution. The bundled interface software should include power-down, dynamic-resolution-switching and color-calibration functions.
Publication Name: Publish
Subject: Publishing industry
ISSN: 0897-6007
Year: 1996
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Fast relief: accelerator boards help get your NuBus Macs up to speed
Article Abstract:
Accelerator boards provide NuBus-based Macintoshes with 16 million colors and speed up QuickDraw routines. The resulting higher resolutions and faster screen refresh rates have led the way to larger monitors for use by professional designers. The more video RAM (VRAM) a board provides the more quickly and clearly it will display higher-resolution images. VRAM is expensive to engineer, resulting in higher prices for these boards. It is important to select a board that is compatible with a particular Macintosh, some will support both the newer PowerPC-based Macs as well as older 680x0-based models. Board speed is related to the base graphics processor and the digital-to-analog converter (DAC). A buyers guide compares 17 Macintosh graphics accelerators available from seven companies.
Publication Name: Publish
Subject: Publishing industry
ISSN: 0897-6007
Year: 1995
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