ALPS Advanced Laser Processing Software

Printing to ALPS from other software

Section 7.6 · Settings ▸ Virtual Printer, AutoPrint and Tray App

What this is for

You already draw in CorelDRAW, or Illustrator, or something that produces artwork and prints. You do not want to change that.

⭐ So do not. ALPS installs itself as a printer. You print to it exactly as you would to any other printer, and the artwork arrives in ALPS as a job.

That is the whole migration path for an existing shop: keep the drawing habits, change only where the file goes afterwards.

The chain, end to end

Four pieces, and it is worth seeing them as a chain before setting any of them up:

your drawing app  →  the ALPS Laser printer  →  a watched folder  →  AutoPrint  →  the laser
                                                       ↕
                                                  the tray app
  1. The virtual printer turns "print" into a file.
  2. A watched folder is where that file lands.
  3. AutoPrint watches those folders and turns files into jobs.
  4. The tray app is what tells you it happened, and lets you stop it.

⭐ ALPS watches three places, and two of them need no setting up at all:

folder where what it is for
the ALPS incoming folder C:\ProgramData\ALPS\incoming ⭐ where the ALPS Laser printer writes. Always watched, no configuration
ALPS Drop Desktop\ALPS Drop ⭐ the friendly one — point Corel's Publish-to-PDF here, or drag a file in. Always watched, and ALPS creates it for you
your shared folder's incoming\ wherever you set it only when a shared folder is configured — for a shop where several stations share a job pool

⭐ So there is nothing to configure to make this work. Register the printer and it works; drop a file on the Desktop folder and it works. The shared folder is an addition for multi-station shops, not a prerequisite.

⚠ Each piece works without the ones after it. You can set up the printer alone and open the jobs by hand. Add AutoPrint only when you want them to go without you. That is the order to build it in, because it is also the order to debug it in.

Step 1 — the virtual printer

Settings ▸ Virtual Printer.

Register a Windows printer creates the ALPS Laser printer. Windows then lists it alongside your real printers.

⭐ You do not have to set a folder. The printer writes to ALPS's own incoming folder, which ALPS watches whether or not you have configured anything else. The folder box on this page is for a shared folder, which a multi-station shop uses to pool jobs — it is an addition, not a prerequisite.

⭐ From CorelDRAW you have two routes: print to ALPS Laser, or point Corel's Publish-to-PDF at Desktop\ALPS Drop. Both end up in the same place. Publish-to-PDF is often the better one, because it is the export path Corel users already trust for a clean PDF — and an exported PDF carries the true design page, so it lands at 1:1.

⚠ Page size matters. ALPS sets the printer's default page to your default machine's bed so large artwork is not silently clamped. If you have several machines with different beds, check the page size in the print dialog rather than assuming.

Step 2 — try it once, by hand

Before automating anything: print one drawing to ALPS Laser, then look at the Jobs screen.

⭐ Do this even though it feels like a step you can skip. It separates "the printer is set up wrong" from "the automation is set up wrong", and those two failures look identical once AutoPrint is running.

Step 3 — AutoPrint

Settings ▸ AutoPrint. This is what turns an arriving file into a job without anyone opening ALPS.

setting what it decides
Default action for incoming jobs what happens when a file lands
Default machine which laser AutoPrint sends to
Default recipe which saved recipe is applied to the detected processes
Confirmation delay seconds to cancel before it sends — default 5
Pause incoming temporarily ignore arrivals without disabling AutoPrint
Notify on auto-send toast and sound when a job goes

⛔ AutoPrint can send a job to a laser without anyone opening ALPS. That is the feature, and it is the thing to be deliberate about. The confirmation delay is your window to stop it — five seconds by default, and worth lengthening while you are learning what arrives.

⚠ Never leave AutoPrint sending to a machine nobody is standing at. Nothing in this chain checks that the bed is clear, that the right material is loaded, or that the last job was taken out.

⭐ Pause incoming is the control to know about. When somebody is about to send you fifty test files, pause rather than switching AutoPrint off — it keeps your whole configuration and just stops acting on arrivals.

Step 4 — the tray app

Settings ▸ Tray App. The tray is ALPS's presence when its window is closed.

Run at login starts it when you sign in — ⭐ set this on the shop machine, or the chain silently stops working every time somebody reboots.

What the tray does when a job arrives decides whether an arrival is announced, queued quietly, or held for you.

⚠ A tray that says "Waiting for you — nothing is sent automatically" is telling you the truth: something arrived and it is deliberately not going anywhere. That is a state, not a fault.

Notification behaviour — toast, sound, webhook — lives in Settings ▸ Notifications.

Working entirely from the tray

⭐ You never have to open the ALPS window. This is the part most people do not realise is there, and it is the whole point of the tray for a busy shop.

Print from CorelDRAW. The tray pops up with the arriving job and gives you, in the popup itself:

control what it does
Machine which laser it goes to
Recipe the saved settings to apply
Template an intake template — see below
Send now encode and send, without opening the editor
Open editor take it into ALPS instead, if this one needs a look

While it works the popup says Encoding & sending…, and you can cancel or resume.

⚠ *If it says "Waiting for you — nothing is sent automatically", that is a state, not a fault.* Something arrived and is deliberately sitting there until you choose. It is what you want on a shared machine.

⭐ So the day-to-day loop for a production shop is: draw in Corel, print, glance at the tray, click send. ALPS itself stays closed.

Intake templates — what makes the tray flow work

Settings ▸ Virtual Printer ▸ Intake templates.

An intake template is a named import profile for the arrival popup: a registration frame colour and offset, a recipe, and whether it sends or opens the editor. You pick it by name in the tray.

⭐ This is what turns the tray from a notification into a workflow. Without one you are choosing machine and recipe on every arrival; with one, a repeat job is a single named choice — "the sticker job", "the badge job" — and the popup applies everything that goes with it.

⚠ Set them up while you are at a computer with time. The moment you need one is the moment you have a customer waiting and a job already on screen.

⛔ When nothing arrives

Work the chain in order, because each link looks healthy on its own:

  1. Does the ALPS Laser printer exist in Windows? If not, Step 1.
  2. Does a file appear in C:\ProgramData\ALPS\incoming when you print? If not, the problem is between Windows and the printer, and nothing after this step matters.
  3. Does the file become a job in the Jobs screen? If not, AutoPrint is off or paused — those are the two states that stop intake, and Pause incoming stops it in every mode.
  4. Did it send? If not, check the default machine, and whether the confirmation delay was cancelled.

⭐ Try Desktop\ALPS Drop as a test. Drag any artwork file into it. If that becomes a job and printing does not, you have proved the problem is the printer, not ALPS — which splits the chain in half in about ten seconds and is much faster than reasoning about it.