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To RIP or not to RIP ?

steflaurent974

Active member
Well I can see taht a lot of photographer are using RIP with their printer. I personally own a Epson R2400 and work with a Color Munki to calibrate the printer.
Will it be usefull for me to use these kind of software ? (I'm thinking of the famous IMAGEPRINT 8)
thanks for your advices...

Stephane.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
If you are happy with the profiles you are generating for the papers you use, there is probably very little need for a RIP for your 2400. With larger printers or when you're using a large variety of papers, a RIP can earn its keep by making your life simple, but for the lone printer using maybe a half-dozen different papers and not printing large batches of images, the RIP isn't going to gain you much...

My .02 only,
 

fotografz

Well-known member
If you are happy with the profiles you are generating for the papers you use, there is probably very little need for a RIP for your 2400. With larger printers or when you're using a large variety of papers, a RIP can earn its keep by making your life simple, but for the lone printer using maybe a half-dozen different papers and not printing large batches of images, the RIP isn't going to gain you much...

My .02 only,
Don't often disagree with you Jack, but I will here.

Now I can't speak to the 2400 but I did do a comparison with my 3800, and the image quality visibly jumped ... so much so it was like two different printers were used.

I had everything tuned and profiled without the RIP, but a pal convinced me to at least try the Colorburst RIP (which isn't exactly the greatest out there), and WOW!

Again, don't know how the 2400 would do.

-Marc
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Marc,

How did you profile your 380 before the RIP; what tool, computer and process was used to create the profiles?

Word of warning for everybody here: you cannot generate accurate print profiles directly from CS on Mac under the Leopard or Snow Leopard OS. Instead you need to use a rather convoluted workaround to print the untagged profiling targets (or as I do, print from Q-Image or similar in Windows running under Fusion on my Mac). I have compared prints using my profiles directly to RIP generated prints and cannot see any appreciable differences other than my own profiles generate cleaner, more neutral B&W's...
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Marc,

How did you profile your 380 before the RIP; what tool, computer and process was used to create the profiles?

Word of warning for everybody here: you cannot generate accurate print profiles directly from CS on Mac under the Leopard or Snow Leopard OS. Instead you need to use a rather convoluted workaround to print the untagged profiling targets (or as I do, print from Q-Image or similar in Windows running under Fusion on my Mac). I have compared prints using my profiles directly to RIP generated prints and cannot see any appreciable differences other than my own profiles generate cleaner, more neutral B&W's...
Mac OSX 10.5.8, 2X3 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon.

Our Tech guy from the ad agency set it up like all the Art Directors Macs so they'd be the same when printing to the Epsons ... and I installed the Colorburst RIP to make my wedding stuff go faster than using PS ... but you are more tech centric than I am Jack, so I bow to your deeper knowledge.

BTW, I haven't experienced B&Ws from the Colorburst RIP that weren't neutral ... I get exactly what I see on the monitor.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about using this specific RIP is that one needn't be that tech saavy. For me it was plug and play. More importantly, I could load an entire wedding folder of 40 album prints into the RIP dialog box, hit print, and walk away. Maybe it's changed since I last used PS, or I just didn't know any other way, but I had to load each image one at a time. What used to take an hour now takes 1 minute.

Marc
 

etrigan63

Active member
I use Qimage Studio running in a Windows 7 x64 VM under Parallels Desktop 5 on my Mac Pro. Works like a champ with my HP B9180 and Canon W6400.
 

steflaurent974

Active member
Well.
This morning I tried the Demo Version of Imageprint 8 with my R2400 Epson.

I have printed the same photo :

number one in photoshop (let the printer manage color) epson driver
number two : IMAGEPRINT
both on A4 premium photo glossy paper ( a sepia BW picture)

I' am sure I missed something in the tuning of Imageprint beause the result is really ugly, with a lot of ink .
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Well.
This morning I tried the Demo Version of Imageprint 8 with my R2400 Epson.

I have printed the same photo :

number one in photoshop (let the printer manage color) epson driver
number two : IMAGEPRINT
both on A4 premium photo glossy paper ( a sepia BW picture)

I' am sure I missed something in the tuning of Imageprint beause the result is really ugly, with a lot of ink .
I read the info for the "trial version" for Macs, and despite having 27,000 paper profiles to choose from, it says the demo version only provides two generic paper profiles for B&W and two for color ... for Matte and Luster finishes. But then goes on to say it is for demo to get an idea what IP v8 can do on any matte or "glossy" paper.

Confusing.

As far as I know, the ink hold out for Premium Glossy is higher than for Luster ... which would account for the printer laying down more ink. If it was the Matte paper profile that you used, it'd be even worse.

-Marc
 

steflaurent974

Active member
Wow this piece of software is really over-protected : impossible to run a standart A4 glossy print with my R2400.

With this fabulous DEMO, now I know I don't need this "wasting-all-my-ink" software. Bye bye IMAGEPRINT. :mad: :confused:

Should I try another one ?
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Mac OSX 10.5.8, 2X3 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon.

Our Tech guy from the ad agency set it up like all the Art Directors Macs so they'd be the same when printing to the Epsons ... and I installed the Colorburst RIP to make my wedding stuff go faster than using PS ... but you are more tech centric than I am Jack, so I bow to your deeper knowledge.
That was your problem --- you cannot do a paper profile "normally" from a Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard. ColorSynch changed under 10.5 to assume any untagged image was s or monitor RGB and tags that profile to it. Unfortunately this included the iMatch profiling targets printed from CS no management, so the resulting image hits the printer converted to this profile and therefore is useless to use to create a profile. For this reason I print my profile targets from Q-Image running under Windows in Fusion. However, here is the workaround for printing the targets directly from OSX:

1) Open (untagged) profile target image in CS4.

2) Edit>Assign Profile>Adobe (or Prophoto*) RGB. Click OK.

3) File>Print.

4) Set Color Handling to Photoshop Manages Colors.

5) Set Printer Profile to Adobe (or Prophoto*) RGB.

6) Set Rendering Intent to Relative Colorimetric.

7) Uncheck Black Point Compensation. (Important!)

8) Click Print.

9) In the Epson driver that now pops up, disable color management and choose whatever driver settings you normally want to use for printing on your chosen paper (e.g., 8 or 16-bit, media type nearest paper you're using, paper thickness, etc). Click Print.

* Note that it does NOT matter whether Adobe or Prophoto RGB is used as the profile for the workaround, but what does matter here is that you choose the exact same profiles in both the “Assign Profile” dialog box and the “Print” dialog box, use relative colorimetric rendering intent and do not use any black-point-compensation. In doing this the applied profiles cancel each other out and the image prints without any effective profile applied even though the file is tagged with the profile you chose; in short, you've tricked OSX's ColorSynch into accepting the image as a properly formatted image so it does not do its automatic system tagging.

Lastly, make sure you let your targets dry down at least 30 minutes ( a few hours is better still) before reading them, and make sure the target is on top of a neutral toned surface as any color in the underlying surface can creep through the paper and impact the read.

Hope this helps,
 

LJL

New member
I have been using ImagePrint (v6.1) on my old G5 machine for years, with my old Epson 7800 set up as a Phatte Black (dual black for matte and glossy surfaces without changing inks), and get uniformly outstanding and repeatable results on almost any paper or cloth I choose for printing. The ink use is actually less with a proper paper profile than on my Epson 4000 that does not use the RIP, and has a very similar ink configuration.

A good RIP provides several features that have not generally been available for most printer/app combinations. For starters, the ImagePrint RIP actually reads files in full 16-bit output. Some of the newer printers and Mac OS versions are now handling things this way also, but RIPs have done it this way from the start. The possible layouts and printing controls in a RIP are far more flexible than any of the drivers provided for printers, or even in the various apps such as Photoshop. The ability to print on almost any type of paper or surface with well-tuned profiles was also not really available without either doing a lot of profiling on your own for a limited number of papers, or now using something like the ColorMunki, that still seems to have some challenges.....especially if one is at all impatient ;-) I routinely switch from B/W matte to color luster or glossy, or even canvas (glossy or luster, fine or coarse), or films or textiles without any loss of color fidelity and rendering, other than what the material permits. (A warm based matte like Epson Ultrasmooth will never give you the whites of Professional Luster or some of the other papers with or without optical brighteners, but the rest of the colors will be very true across the board, from my experinece.)

Jack's pointers about how to set things up in the print controls without using a RIP are critically important. If you do not get the color management set up correctly, you will have lots of issues. On the other hand, with a RIP, you do not have to worry about any of that, as it is all properly managed in the app. I create 16-bit PSD files as finals, and then drop them into a folder for printing. From there, the rest is a near perfect, and always repeatable process, regardless of paper type being fed in.

RIPs are not cheap, but they do a fantastic job, especially if your set-up changes. I routinely make new prints or make reprints for folks at differing sizes and times and every single one matches every other one. From my commercial perspective, that is terribly important, and I think that would be the case for anybody doing repeated printings over time.

All that being said, I do think that some of the newer printers and associated gear, plus some of the better profiles being created for these printers by the OEM or with their onboard tools, one could easily do without a RIP if your printing needs do not require lots of different surfaces and sizes. I may forgo the RIP with my next round of computer/printer/app upgrades, but I am already preparing for the pared down choices there.

LJ
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Agree totally with everything you say LJ ;)

Couple of added points:

1) RIPs are also not usually transferrable to different (read newer or larger) printers without paying an upgrade fee. For example, a RIP for an Epson 9900 is almost 2x the cost of the 7900 even though they are the exact same program, the 11900 even more.

2) As for the layout benefit, Q-Image which I mentioned above is a printing program that is basically the layout and color-management portion of a RIP without any dedicated profiles -- you add your own -- and is available at a very reasonable cost AND supports most common photo-quality printers.
 

etrigan63

Active member
I second the use of Q-Image in a VM. I run it under Windows 7 x64 in Parallels Desktop 5 and it works like a champ. Studio version ($89) is 64-bit and multi-core.
 
I

Iliah

Guest
One of the main reasons I suggest RIPs is to overcome inconsistencies in colour management, like the issues with printing targets for profiling (for example those present in OS X 10.5 + CS4 and 10.6). The other reasons include control over black, fast linearization, direct CMYK, and, of course, the use of device links.
 

donbga

Member
There is one advantage to using the Color Burst RIP for the Epson 3800. The maximum print length using the Epson driver is limited to 37.4 inches. With the CB RIP the lenght is extremely long.
 

PeterA

Well-known member
Imageprint 8 does what Adobe cant - make it easy for a person to make an outstanding print in colour or B&W on any paper they choose to use. Adobe is like Microsoft in encouraging all sorts of industries around their clunky software workflow for printing - wher someone tortures themselves for long enough to learn how to make a print - and then can actually make a dollar teaching people how to do it following a bunch of arcane steps with a thousand exceptions ...balh blah blah..

Just buy a decent RIP.
 

docmoore

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Imageprint 8

Just buy a decent RIP.
I cannot agree more Peter

....and it would behoove one to learn how to use the demo version before denigrating it online. When I recently moved to Print Through Application for IP 8 I had terrible conflicts with color management from IP versus Adobe. First time in over five years.

Imagine this .... in LR Beta 3 you can use ProPhoto RGB as color space and get great prints...in CS4 and LR 2 you HAVE to use Adobe RGB or the ink drips off the page out of the printer. If you let CS4 convert to Adobe RGB in the print process everything looks exactly like IP8 straight or IP8/PTA through LR Beta 3 with ProPhoto RGB.

This is not the RIP's fault but must be managed to see what the RIP can do.

Either IP or Colorburst will simplify your printing if you figure out how to use them...and IP 8 now is available for the 7900/9900.

When I hear complaints about the RIP's cost from those of us who have 10s of thousands of dollars invested in glass and silica wafers I have to reflect that for myself the cost is not that out of line. IF printed output is the desired end result and not JPGs for the web.

Not that you cannot do this without the RIP...I just think it is easier and more consistent, especially if you want to use more than one or two papers.

Bob
 

gogopix

Subscriber
I may change my mind as printer gets older (or ME! :ROTFL: ) but I believe in being "...approximately right, not precisely wrong..."

When RIPs work, they seem to work well; but with , SW that handles profiles well (Qimage, incl files over 1.5GB), and decent (not PERFECT) profiles, say for the popular papers with RIP, I have been getting very good prints from the 7900. I hear too many 'little girl with a curl' stories on losing hair over RIPs (pun intended! :)

LR basically sucks as we see with M9 and Phase backs and can't profile ICC. PS I gave up on printing yrs ago. With C1, PS4 and Qimage my workflow is a lot simpler.

Given the range of "looks" from inks, paper, lighting, CB, profiles etc. The RIPs can be very precise, but not necessarily close to how you want the images to look. Yes, sometimes I print, and go back and tweak the IMAGE FILE, not the paper profile, but mostly Not. With EEF, Hanaman FB Ilford silk etc looking really good and selling well.

Almost as easy as with the Kodak 8660, that is spot on! :D

Victor
 
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