Sometimes those artsy designers give me garbage artwork that looks cool but is sort of - unprintable (no trapping, no profiles, clipping masks that complicate fixing thier mistakes, etc.). Sometimes people that don't know what they are doing send me compressed JPEGS and want them enlarged, expecting them to look good or something. Actually, one time someone sent me a fax and asked me to blow it up 300% and screen-print it. That part of the business sucks, but when I deal with people who know what they are doing it's a good way to make a living.
Typically, I use Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Sometimes people give me Quark files, which I can't stand cause Quark is so clunky to use.
If I get an illustrator file I check the trapping and add it, if neccessary. If any elements are in Photoshop I open them to make sure they are ok. I do the imposition in InDesign (usually work is multiple up) and double check the trapping from there, and make sure the seperations look normal with the handy "output preview/seperations/ink limits" palette.
Then, if the printing is outsourced then I make a PDF x/1a out of it and send it away. If i'm printing it then I make seperations from InDesign and then create a postscript file.
The great thing about the Adobe workflow is that all ICC profiles are kept so you can move to program to program, to different computers, and assuming your monitors are all calibrated - they all look the same.
The RIP that I use is Wasatch, which is a very powerful program that allows you to do just about everything. If you do any screen printing it has an amazing "precision rosette" feature that works very well, giving you a stocastic yellow for no moire problems. It's compatible with just about every printer on the market, and is reasonably priced too. I highly reccomend. This is thier website:
http://www.wasatchinc.com/
Other software that I use in the process is Monico Profiler, which lets me create output profiles for the different printers and all of thier media, so I know whatever substrate I'm printing on it's going to look accurate and good. I do this whenever I'm printing on a new type of paper. I also use Monico Optix to get all my monitors looking the same. I also have a dye-sublimation printer, an old epson 3000, a dot-matrix that I keep around for some reason (but never use), and of course a table and lots of x-acto knives....
I have a system and it works very well... I know what it's going to look like before I print a thing.... It's a great feeling when it all works. Epsons are good printers, I'd go with them. HPs are pretty good too if they are more in your price range.
