Digital Prints

338
Mastering Digital Printing
■ Screening: Each RIP has its own way to create an image’s screening pattern (there are hundreds
of screening patterns registered with the U.S. Patent Office). These screening or
dithering formulas replace those of the normal printer driver’s, and most RIPs offer a selection
from which to choose.
■ Color Management: One area where a RIP can be a definite advantage is with color management.
Instead of relying on a standard inkjet printer’s hidden or “black box” conversions
going from RGB to CMYK, a good CMYK RIP will give you much more control
and power over the output process. As one RIP-maker said it, “This is very different from
‘pretty picture’ color management where you only need a couple of good ICC profiles to
produce predictable, pleasing results.” Most RIPs can work seamlessly with standard ICC
profiles. Linearization (a calibration step done before profiling to assure consistent print
behavior) is frequently an added feature of RIPs.
■ Ink Control: With most inkjet printers, the main control you have over such things as inklimiting
is with the crude Media Type or paper stock selection (some of the newer printers
also have a Color Density or Ink Density slider to help accomplish this). You have only
a few choices, and they affect all ink colors across the board. However, with a full-featured
RIP, you can specify ink percentages for each ink channel supported by the printer. With
this kind of precision, you can avoid oversaturating paper stocks with inks and optimizing
ink laydown. This also includes ink mixing, which defines the points at which, for
example, the light magenta and light cyan inks come into the image.
■ Press Proofing: If you’re doing proofing to emulate another type of printer (an offset press,
for example), RIPs usually provide the best way to do this.
■ PostScript: Many RIPs are PostScript enabled (see “What About PostScript” box).
■ Enlarging: RIPs use their own proprietary software algorithms to scale up or interpolate a
file’s data, and some claim their methods are superior to other methods. In addition, some
RIPs allow you to make prints larger than you can with standard printer drivers. (See
“Printing Big!” for more.)
ColorByte’s ImagePrint RIP helps
photographer David Saffir control his
ink densities per channel for his Epson
7600 printer.
Courtesy of David Saffir
www.davidsaffir.com