Print to file, to the best of my knowledge, creates a PRN file that is encoded for your printer. You can port the file (if you like) to a computer that doesn’t have photoshop and drag-n-drop it onto the printer (the exact same printer) and it will print. I’ve never used it, don’t know how well it works or what the caveats are, but that’s my understanding of it.
Why are you printing to file anyway? Just experimenting?
Peace,
Tony
In some trades, the ‘print to file’ is a way to send a job to another person and ensure he’ll be getting the expected result as you make a PostScript file that is ready for printing.
In fact you can make, for example, a ‘print to file’ to a PostScript driver (you don’t really need to have the physical printer) from Quark XPress to prepare a PostScript file and then pass it through a PDF maker like Acrobat Distiller.
Many people use that way to prepare files for prepress.
In Photoshop, as it happens to be a single-page application and (in its latest versions at least) it is fully PDF-aware I do not see much use for the print to file way.
But I might be wrong, of course.
Thanks Gustavo – makes sense.
If can remember it right:
for non-postcript: you used the PRINT command to print a .prn file. for PostScript: you used the SEND utility command.
In PS: if the file is generated using a PostScript driver, change the .prn to .ps and PS will rasterize the file. That’s what I do before when I want to preflight a file.
To create a PDF file: One option is to manually generate a Postscript file and then Distilled it. For that you use Print to file and put a .ps extension.
For Page-layout program say PM7: Besides going to PDF, Print to file is one option to make sure that all elements of your document will be printed correctly when sent to a service bureau, i.e., when PDF is still a baby or if your service bureau has not yet upgraded its system to support PDF. Oh look-up for that huge megabytes.
Eco and others,
Well, all this is a lot more than I wanted to know. I have about 100 files that I need to make available to sales so they can print them at will. Since they will be totally confused by this process (trust me) I thought I could just make a simple "print to file" file they could just print. Looks like it’s more complicated than that.
Furthermore, the documents are Quark files, not photoshop, and I wasn’t about to find a "print to file" option in Quark anyway.
Thanks anyway, sorry about the mix up.
Richard
Your solution is simple. You need to get Adobe Acrobat, and make acrobat PDF files from the Quark ones. Then your users can get the free (and simple) Acrobat Reader (or is it Adobe Reader now) and use this to view, and print, your files.
Sometimes explaining your problem (message 5) results in better information than asking about your proposed solution (original message).
If you can get them into photoshop, you don’t need full blown acrobat, just Save As PDF. Then sales can open and print them.
Richard and Tony,
If it’s Quark (multipage) and then 100 files or more, what Don said: Get Acrobat with Distiller. As expensive as it might seem, it’s the appropriated tool. And if you can afford the Acrobat Pro 6 version, that can prepare PDF/X, you’ll be able to send files suitable from commercial salesmen to professional offset printing.
But, before anyone jumps over my hunchback, I’ll say that InDesign 3 is supposed to appear any time soon and I think it will be way better than Quark 6, specially in reference to PDF and PDF/X.
Hope it helps
Gustavo Sánchez
(Posted from Spain)
My suggestions are:
1. Get PDF plug-in for Quark.
or,
2. Archive those files to CD and bring them to a service bureau. Let them do the PDFing.
Eco,
As for option (1), Quark up to version 5 needs a Distiller-like thing to make the export as PDF xtension work. And, as far as I know, Quark 6 includes the JawsPDF Creator ‘inside’ (PDF level 1.3 only). Not that this is neccesarily a bad thing but it’s something to take into account as Quark prices (and fortunes) go.
If you want to use your PRN files you can simply make a Batch file with…
Copy [FileName] [Printer Path]
For example if you have a network printer with the share name "printer" on a server named "server" the command would look like this…
COPY %1 \\Server\printer
You can then associate PRN files with the batch file. That way if they double click on a PRN file it will send it to the specified printer.
