The option of the PS Z is a hardware embedded rip, yet not indifferent to the standard versions. It is an Adobe hardware rip that is plugged in at the comm port. It allows all PDF level 1.6 or less, tiff, jpg, PCL, . It is not however CMYK, but will accept any CMYK docs which are converted to three color space for plotting.
I would say the new Z inks are every bit as good as the UV inks previously used. The Z printers definitely have more photographic output than the older plotters. There are CMYK rips already out there for the standard Z printers. EFI, GMG, and ImagePrint all will do this. They will do this at least as well as the PS option , and in most ways better with substantial functionality. The PS option for me is rather a port communication option for multipost printing, not a full function rip as one would expect. The onboard spectro will do better than a hand held spectro in the sense of repeatability and consistency. Your results though on canvas with any normal 45/0 º spectro will be less than perfect due to the nature of the surface. There are two ink options to date; The Z2100 8 ink or the Z3100 12 ink 11 color. Both are available in 24 or 44² models. The Ethernet cards are 10/100 Mbs that you can set to full duplex if you like. The cards are not a bottle neck, but the processing of the spool file is slow. I¹ve not had a time out or comm error yet. -- Neil Snape photographer Paris France
