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Hi Mark,
The main reason is probably the raster/vector conversion. You really have to think of your plotter as multiple devices, a print engine which actually lays the ink on the page, and the rip engine which controls all the rotation, scaling, queuing, format conversion, etc. When you send a tif image it is strictly raster that may be optionally decompressed and then output to the print engine. This is happening internally on the device itself if there is no intermediate processing, which appears to be your case. The PDF however can be either a single raster image in what amounts to a wrapper for page control, or it can be thousands of vector elements which must each be drawn onto a bitmap first.
I could probably provide you samples of both types, and the processing times between them would be dramatic, possibly even as dramatic as your pdf/tif comparisons. Processing of these elements takes time and memory. I'm pretty certain that the processor in your plotter is nowhere near the capability of the one on your desk. I don't recall the specifics on the 1050, but the same applies to most devices. It also has less ram to deal with. The printer portion of your device is brain dead. All of them are. At the most basic level, they only understand rows of pixels. The capability to process anything other than that is built into whatever controller mechanism is present. This can be on the device itself as well, but it could also be a remote computer. All that comes down to a basic premise. If speed is the overwhelming issue, rip the job externally where you can expand, tune, etc., then send the raw image to the device.
I work with pretty much all of the large format vendors on a daily basis, and this doesn't change from one to the other. Some are better at the on board rip than others, but there's always a trade off somewhere in the process. The 1050 is designed for image quality first and speed second. That's why there's always a "newer, faster, better" plotter coming along. The technology available keeps getting newer, faster, better, as well. That's also why a great many of them have been going to either external controllers or replaceable embedded controllers. As new technology is available the unit can be upgraded without the cost of the print engine.
At 03:14 PM 4/30/2004, Mark Clute wrote:
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We recently purchased an HP 1050C plotter. Prints (including PDFs) are sent to the plotter and the file is spooled on the plotter, not on the computer. If I send a PDF that is - say 100k in size- it takes three times as long as a tif image that is 30 meg! Any ideas where to begin identifying the 'why'?
Mark Clute Director St Joseph County Land Resource Centre [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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