1.     We have control over the amount of ink being laid down per ink channel and all ink channels together.   A a results we are able to avoid over inking problems on certain types of media and as a consequence we are able to reduce the differential of sheen so often seen with the use of pigment inks on certain types of media.
                                              see how this is done!

2. This level of control allows us to find the point at which we can reach the maximum possible colour gamut and density, whilst using the least amount of ink. Over-inking usually will lead to a deterioration of colour gamut and no improvement of the maximum density.                                 see how this is done >>


3.     Instead of choosing a pre-defined linearization (usually called media type settings in the printer drivers) we can build ourselves from scratch a linearization, which is of course more accurate than a generic one.    What is a linearization? In simple words: Defining which amount of ink is going to be our maximum and making sure that we get a smooth and gradual transition in even steps from 0 (no ink) to 100% (our maximum setting).  In other words: the difference between 0% and 10% should be the same as the difference between 10% and 20% etc.  This will lead to far better tonal transitions.

4.     We can build CMYK profiles (and in some cases even multi-colour / hexachrome for multi colour printers), with the advantage having control over the balance between the colour channels and the black channel.     For this reason we are able to build a workflow in which we can optimise a profile for B&W with a reduced metamerism:  Prints will stay fairly neutral under various viewing conditions.
                                              see how this is done

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5. Hexachrome and CMYK: If we made a CMYK profile for a Hexachrome printer: the colour gamut was not much better compared with a CMYK printer using a CMYK profile, but once we made a multicolour hexachrome profile for the Hexachrome printer, we could see a massive improvement in de colour gamut: the primary colours from the colour spectrum were far more fibrant using such profiles.

6.     A good Rip is able to handle may type’s of files in both RGB as well in CMYK mode. Is able to proper colour manage not only jpg and tiff files but also pdf and eps files .  The advantage is that files prepared for press printing (like a magazine) with combined text and images can be properly colour managed for printing on an inkjet printer, which is not possible using the standard Epson (RGB)printer driver. The Epson RGB printer driver converts the file from RGB to CMYK. Sending a CMYK file to the Epson driver will lead to a double conversion and as a result to incorrect colour handling of the digital file. Files prepared for press are always in CMYK mode.  Usually a rip allows us not only to apply a (CMYK) printer profile, but simultaniously is able to apply a so called reference profile from the another printing device. This allows us to ‘proof’ simulate many other printing devices like offset press. Because the colour gamut of offset press is smaller than from an inkjet printer and we are able to apply the offset press reference profile simultaniously with using the profile for the inkjet printer we are able to make the inkjet printer match the final press.                                               go back

What are the workflow advantages of a software rip?              

1.         We can batch process many images without the need to ‘spool’ or ‘send’ each individual image to the printer like we have to do with the standard supplied drivers, which is a very time consuming process.   Instead of this, various Rip have various solutions:   One solution is the creation of a so called ‘ hot’ folder.  (Shiraz RIP)  We can make various hot folders for various type’s of media.  The only thing we need to do is drop the images into it: We easily drop 50 or 100 images into it simultanuously and walk away and let the Rip handle it all:  Colour management, applying of the appropriate linearization and profiles is done fully automatically: we do not need to worry if we have applied the right mediatype settings  and the right profile.  What would cost us a few hours of work, can now be done in a few minutes.

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A different way is dropping images into what we call a ‘viewer’ in which we can see the layout of a sheet of paper (or roll) and we can see how the images are placed onto the roll of paper.   (See on the left: Colorbyte Image Print viewer)

We can ‘instruct’ the Rip how to place the images on the roll: define the distance between the images and the distance to the beginning and (side) edge of the paper.  We can have crop marks being printed around each image, a frame, a border line and much more.

Instead of creating a Canvas in Photoshop onto which we drop various images, the Rip will fully automatically place the images side by side on a roll of paper (= called 'nesting')
The way in which it is done can vary from Rip to Rip. 

In simple words; A software Rip is able to fully automate our printing workflow.

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Conclusion:

During the year 2004 we tested a whole lot of different Rip’s and we came to the conclusion that the Shiraz Rip was giving us the best results in many respects:

With some Rip’s the dithering pattern was not as good as shiraz or the Epson driver.
Some Rip’s do perform banding even at 1440 dpi
Shiraz gave us no banding, no visible dot patterns, continuous tone prints, very high resolution, and a better colour gamut and contrast than any other Rip.     With some rip’s we did get no proper guidance either within the manual or within the software for setting the single ink limitation or total ink limitation.   With some Rip’s the total ink limitation did not seem to work at all.
It is possible to optimise the Shiraz Rip for third party inks and it also here performs much better than any other Rip we have tested so far. In this respect Shiraz RIP is the most advanced Rip we came across.


We think that Colorbyte Image Print Rip is the most user friendly Rip, it produces extremely nice Black & White prints straight out of the box and produces Gloss and semi Gloss prints with an extremely even sheen.
Spooling of images to the printer is extremely fast, possibly the fastest on the market.

What about printing Black& White? (go to the next page)

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