Large Format Printers - RIP Driver?

[RyanSpaulding]

Hey guys,

 

We just purchased the Epson 7800 large format printer for work (I was tired of having print shops not get the colors spot on and working with their schedule). Well, my bosses both swore that a RIP driver would help with the color correction and print ouput.

 

After a half day poking around in the Colorburst RIP Driver Utility, I must say I'm missing the point. It seems to just be able to control the printer queue better. They paid an extra $1000 for the edition with the RIP driver. WTF do rip drivers even do? I see no options here that aren't in Photoshop already.

 

I'll continue to poke around, but I feel I must be missing something. That CAN'T be all it does....

[AJLynn]

You load a PS file into it then you can mess with the ink levels. At least, that's what I spent an hour watching our local print shop people do with my boards in Colorburst yesterday They swear by it.

[BrianKitts]

when you say rip driver..... do you mean a standalone ripper or are you just speaking about a different driver..... I've never heard of a $1000 driver.....

 

when computers didn't have as much power as they do now, rippers were great for cutting your spool time from 10 mins down to 1 min when spooling large documents. But don't get me wrong they are definately beneficial for spooling and queing documents rather than tying up a system to preform necessary functions.

 

A ripper isn't necessary for color correction, depending on models you can add a color profile in the printer itself no ripper required. However it is a good place to do it all the same... our office sets the calibration and color settings for our laser printer / copier / scanner through a ripper, whereas I don't think we have a ripper on our large format plotter.

 

One of the nice benefits to a ripper is you can store print tasks in the ripper and resend them without going to a computer, reopening the file, sending to print, queing....etc.... you get the point. And depending on your model you can scan images to the ripper and retrieve the scan from any machine on your network..... different rippers different options.

 

I'm pretty sure my rambling might not have answered your question of if a ripper is really necessary, but you did ask what they were for.....

 

 

edit: quick google pulled this up, might help you....

http://www.large-format-printers.org/ColorGateRIPlargeformatprinters/RIPsfor_largeformatprinters.htm

[Chad Warner]

If you print from photoshop, you HAVE to use the epson ICC profiles when you print. You can get them from the epson site, and they make the colors print exactly the same as you see on the screen. We have the 9600 here and it is such a good printer, as long as you have the color profiles.