I hate RIPS...
I hate RIPS...
- Subject: I hate RIPS...
- From: "Darrian Young" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 20:07:21 +0100
This may come a bit late as do to workload I am way behind in e-mail, but I
wanted to make a couple of comments regarding this topic. I think on the
last exchange between Henrik and Andrew that the point finally became
somewhat less murky. Depending on the work environment and final end of
printing on the inkjet, one can evaluate whethe or not a RIP is necessary.
Some of the reasons listed for not using a RIP have been:
Color changes with inks and papers, and problems with whiteners. Really a
non-issue as this is completely independent of the RIP. This does bring up
a point which continually appears on this list for some reason. When
posting about proofing, there is a lot of talk about which profiling
software, how many measurments, which sepctro, etc. but little regarding
paper and inks. With proofing, everything needs to be controlled as much as
possible. Why on earth would you proof on paper with whiteners and a UV
problem? There are plenty of semi-matte proofing papers out there without
this problem, and which also give a similar response to offset (for
example), which is not an unimportant feature. CGS has developed inks and
paper to cut down drastically on the color drift problem as well.
Bad results with some RIPs. Yes a big problem. I think I mentioned awhile
back that there are quite a few not so hot RIP solutions out there.
Solution - find a good one, they do exist.
Price of the RIP - this is associated with the work environment, but I think
if put into context, the RIP is not expensive at all. In many instances the
inkjet has been installed to replace analog proofing systems. If you
compare the price of these systems, the time involved to produce the print,
and the cost of materials, and then compare that to the cost of an inkjet
with a GOOD RIP with the price of the inkjet consumibles, the "high" price
of the RIP now looks like nockles and dimes. Of course ir you are simply
printing a few photograhps a day, the ROI may not be for you, but this is
definitely not an argument against RIPS.
Most don't run on a Mac. Obvious reason - historic lack of multiprocessor
support and preemptive multitasking. RIPs need a robust platform to run on
not only for speed (compare a Harlequin on a Mac on Windows) so that when
you send a 400 MB job while it is printing another, your machine doesn't
explode.
The last argument I recall is - why a RIP if I get good results with the
Quickdraw driver?. Once again, this is environment specific. In a printing
environment, you need to print a lot of large jobs quickly. Obviously
impossible with the Photoshop ripping option. Also, color is not
everything. It is important to check overprints, trapping, fonts, etc. In
an critical environment,
the data to be proofed should be coming in as some sort of TIFF ot CT/LW
flat file created by your platesetter or imagesetter RIP so that you can
really see what is going to press.
Lastly, in my opinion, you do not have enough control of the inkjet if you
print in RGB mode. Many times, after creating a profile, it is necessary to
do manual adjustments to correct for visual differences via dotgain, CMYK
curves or another number of tools, which you simply cannot control
sufficiently with RGB curves in a profile editor. Another common plight of
the inkjet printers, especially Epson, is the tendency to put too much ink
on the paper. This should be precisely controlled in the RIP to get the
maximum gammut without sacrificing detail. Also not possible or extremely
difficult in an RGB printing mode.
Regards.
Darrian Young
MGV
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