RIP is an important element of a successful commercial printer’s prepress workflow. A RIP translates the curves and arcs of PostScript code into a matrix of dots that can be printed by the custom printing vendor’s imagesetter or platesetter. It is a universal translator for printers where you can print the pages you create in Quark or InDesign, or if your files are not created suitably, the RIP can throttle and not print your work.
About RIP Software
The graphics and fonts in your page composition software are composed of Bezier curves. When the target imaging device is printed, these arcs will be of the highest resolution. A 2400 dpi platesetter will print the file at this higher resolution, while a 600 dpi laser printer will print at 600 dpi.
The imaging device (platesetter, imagesetter, or laser printer) does not understand PostScript code. Thus, the “vector” code of lines and arcs should be rendered into a fixed pattern of dots on a grid, a “raster” image. RIP Software does precisely this.
RIPs come in various flavours. Some are devoted hardware devices that come with the platesetter or imagesetter, and other RIPS are firmware constructed into the printer’s tracks.
Finally, certain RIPS are software only, and they can be used with several different printers. For example, if you purchase an inkjet printer, you will also need to buy RIP software if you wish to print out the complex graphics made by your PostScript software.
When there is no RIP
In a few situations, you might not have a RIP at all. Instead, you may depend on a printer driver to allow the originating application to communicate with the destination printing device. This may be okay, but if you are producing intricate documents, you will probably need a RIP, and if you want added functionality, you might also want a RIP.
Unlike a printer driver, a RIP can add these extra capabilities to your commercial printer’s workflow:
- A RIP can deal with imposition, which is the position of pages on a press sheet so that the sheet will have all the pages in the correct order when it has been trimmed and folded.
- A RIP can gather and process a group of print jobs and batch process these files. Delegating this task will save your PC from slowing down when you do page composition and also save your printer from running slowly or damaging your print job with banding or artifacts.
- A RIP can handle colour separations and halftone screening.
- A RIP can handle trapping, which means the adjustment of design elements to create a slight overlap where items of different colours touch each other so that if the job is printed slightly out of register, there would not be white lines between the colours.
To avoid RIP compatibility issues and corrupted graphics or fonts, a good rule of thumb is that if the job cannot be printed on your laser printer, it would not RIP appropriately on your custom printing vendor’s device. Thus, examine the document before uploading it to your commercial printer’s FTP portal.
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