64 bit PS Driver

[Guest]

Because this is the only forum dedicated to something about Postscript I thought I would post this here.  I am looking for a postscript driver that is compatible with x64 windows.  We are using it in a pre-press solution called Newsway and right now have AdobePS Adobe 7.0 printer driver for our postscript.  That is not compatible with Windows x64.  I so-far have not been able to find a PS driver ANYWHERE that supports x64, but I know there has to be one out there.  Maybe included with Acrobat 9?  This needs to be a print driver that outputs plain, pure postscript.  The PDF converter drivers that come as part of Acrobat 8 and so on will NOT work for our setup.  We need PS.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

[Dov Isaacs]

Dan,

The fact is that Adobe has not provided any PostScript drivers for Windows since the days of WIndows'9x and Windows NT 4. Since that time, Windows has shipped with a built-in PostScript driver, PSCRIPT5. This has shipped on every version of Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and the various flavours of Windows Servers. For the 64-bit versions of Windows, a 64-bit version of PSCRIPT5 is provided. Particular PostScript printer driver instances using PSCRIPT5 are generated using Windows Add Printer wizard in conjunction with vendor-supplied .INF and .PPD files (many of which are bundled with Windows itself).

I don't know what you mean by the AdobePS Adobe 7.0 printer driver. Perhaps you are referring to the PostScript printer driver instance created by the installer for Adobe Acrobat 7.0, an obsolete, 5-year old version of Acrobat that was not compatible with any 64-bit versions of Windows. (The PostScript printer driver instance created by Acrobat is for generation of PDF via automatic distillation of PostScript. That is unlikely what you are looking for.)

I personally am not aware of the Newsway pre-press solution and what you or it require in terms of PostScript. Are you trying to create PostScript for Newsway or from Newsway? In the former case, the vendor of Newsway should be providing either a driver installer to invoke creation of a PSCRIPT5-based driver instance under Windows or at least the .INF and .PPD files necessary for use by the Add Printer wizard of Windows.

Provide some more information and we might be able to better guide you.

          - Dov

[Guest]

We are trying to print PS to Newsway.  The driver listed on our server where we share all the printers (which are managed by Virtual Port Mapper) is listed as AdobePS AdobePDF 7.0, I don't know where it came from, but we do not have a copy anywhere in the company of Acrobat 7.  We are running CS3 Design Premium, but I'm not sure if that contains a PS driver PPD & INF.  If it did and I could locate that, that would be helpful, but I still would have to customize it to work with x64 I assume.  The reason we are printing PS to Newsway is that our pre-press solution has a distiller process in it, which makes that process more centralized and easier to manage rather than having all our 17 artists with their own distiller process leading to different configurations.

[Dov Isaacs]

OK, better understand your situation.

If you had CS3 Design Premium, it came bundled with Acrobat 7 Professional which installed the PostScript printer driver instance you describe. Its "plumbing" of that PostScript printer driver instance includes special driver plug-ins that are not Windows 64-bit compatible. I suspect that you are simply using that driver instance to create a fairly device-independent PostScript language level 3 file by diverting the PostScript to the "file" port.

I don't know what applications you are creating PostScript from for input into Newsway's PDF generator (I assume that it is not based on Adobe's Acrobat technology, but rather a third party product) but consider the following:

1. If you are trying to get PDF from Adobe's Creative Suite applications (since you state  you have CS3), you should be aware that Adobe most strongly recommends creation of PDF via direct PDF export from these applications, not through distillation of PostScript from same. The "export PDF" function of InDesign and the "save as PDF" capabilities of both Illustrator and Photoshop yield much higher quality PDF for prepress purposes than anything that would go through a conversion of PostScript to PDF. Note that the imaging model of PostScript is only a subset of that for PDF and that creating press quality PDF via distallation of PostScript can be very "lossy" - we most strongly recommend against this type of workflow. Instead, take the PDF directly created by the CS applications and feed that to Newsway.
2. Assuming that for some unfathomable reason, you really feel you must have the lower quality PDF that would be created via PostScript, both InDesign and Illustrator are capable of creating and saving to a PostScript file without going through a print driver. Similarly, Photoshop allows you to save to .EPS  (encapsulated PostScript) files which most Distiller-like software can process the same way as PostScript files.
3. Barring direct export of PDF or saving as PostScript or EPS, your only other alternative is to creative a virtual PostScript driver instance to match the requirements of Newsway's PostScript to PDF converter. It would be the responsibility of the vendor of Newsway to provide the driver installer or at least the .INF and .PPD files for you that are appropriate for their product. Note that PostScript in reality is fairly device-dependent and that the PPD table drives the native Windows PSCRIPT5 driver to generate device-appropriate PostScript.

Hopefully this answers your questions and points you to a solution to your problem.

          - Dov