Digital Prints

■ Grayscale: Some specialized RIPs give you a lot of control in making very neutral grayscale
or black-and-white prints. See “The Secret World of Digital Black and White” later in this
chapter for more about this.
■ Production Tools: There are many production aids RIPs provide that most normal printer
drivers do not. These include such things as nesting (arranging multiple images to reduce
paper waste), tiling (breaking apart very large images into smaller pieces), rotating, cropping,
adding trim marks, queuing/spooling, and more. You will have to decide how important
these features are to your digital workflow since some of these production-oriented
tools are wasted on individuals doing single prints.
Are there disadvantages to RIPs? Of course, and the primary one is cost. RIPs are priced
by the size, type, and number of printers supported, and you can figure on spending several
hundred to a few thousand dollars on one. RIPs are also complicated to learn, may
require training, and require a longer, more complex process to set up for a new paper,
ink, or printer than a standard driver. You will have to decide if the added benefits and
features of a RIP are worth the price.
Finding a RIP
Most wide-format inkjet printers either come with RIPs as options, or you can purchase
a third-party RIP separately. For desktop inkjet, only Epson and HP currently make
optional software RIPs for certain models (Epson 4000 and HP Designjet 130, for example),
but again, you can find third-party solutions for this category (RIP makers will tell
you which printers are supported, and many desktop versions have a scaled-down feature
list to lower the price). Epson claims that more than 50 third-party RIPs are compatible
with their various printers.
RIPs come in different types ranging from software-only to integrated stand-alone devices.
Providers of popular third-party software RIPS include: American Imaging Corp.
(Evolution), ColorByte (ImagePrint), ColorBurst Systems (ColorBurst), ErgoSoft
(StudioPrint), Onyx (PosterShop), PosterJet, and Wasatch (SoftRIP).
Another option is to use a dedicated PostScript printer model such as the HP Designjet
5500ps or the Roland Hi-Fi JET Pro, each of which has its own PostScript RIP built right
into the device. Many laser printers also come in PostScript versions. See the “What About
PostScript?” box next for more about PostScript.
RIPs and PostScript
Do all RIPs work with PostScript? No. But to take advantage of what PostScript offers
(such as the ability to render PostScript files cleanly), many outside RIPs you might consider
will undoubtedly be PostScript RIPs or, like ImagePrint or StudioPrint, come in
PostScript and non-PostScript versions.
Chapter 11 ■ Special Printing Techniques 339