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News Release from: SiliconCrag | Subject: Topaz RIP
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial
Team on 30 May 2005
RIPing and Printing And Better Colour
Control
Topaz RIP is designed to meet the demands of the graphic and signage market and is claimed to be completely different to other available RIPs, claimed Siliconcrag.
Topaz RIP is designed to meet the demands of the graphic and signage market and is claimed to be completely different to other available RIPs, claimed Siliconcrag According to the company, the RIP's main structural difference provides for fast operation and simultaneous RIPing and printing
This article was originally published on Printingtalk on 7 Feb 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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Topaz RIP has Profiling Wizard in it as a default, which other rips cannot provide, claimed the company.
There are three levels of profiling in Topaz RIP - users can do linearisation and profiling without profiler software and calibration devices, just by using normal scanners.
Generally, other RIPS are too dependent to ICC profiles, so users will see unexpected results in the real output, which means they have difficulties in colour correction if they do not create ICC profile each time, said Siliconcrag.
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Topaz RIP's colour management system (CMS) is designed for maximum freedom in colour control and it is not dependent on ICC profiles.
That means that ICC profile itself is just a part of the Topaz CMS structure.
Topaz CMS is putting more weight on variety of colour control within the maximised colour gamut secured, said the company.
According to Siliconcrag, most people agree that ICC profiles generally make output colors muted and dimmed, which could cause critical problems in photographs, fine arts, posters, banners and POP signs.
The company added that creating ICC profiles each time is tedious work, because printing conditions like media, ink, machine, resolution, screen and other options are changeable every time.
Because of ICC dependency, colour is generally downgraded as the colour gamut is limited.
Users cannot correctly predict the change of colour in output when adjusting colour in other RIPs, that is because the RIP is too dependent on ICC profiles.
In addition, gamma, saturation, level and brightness corrections are screened by ICC profiles, which give confusing results.
For example, decreasing cyan by 10 per cent could unexpectedly produce a five per cent increase in yellow on the print output and most users suffer from colour correction problem in other rips, said Siliconcrag.
The company believes that there is also a limitation in black enhancement.
When users want to print 'backlit', black control is very important.
With other RIPs, if users want to increase ink cut, overall colour could be out of control.
So in many backlit applications, black is too weak.
Topaz RIP is claimed to expand the gamut of ICC profile and allow users to freely adjust colours.
Topaz colour control is predictable, flexible and controllable because the Topaz colour control module is independent to ICC profiles and the RIP is using ICC profiles as a basement of CMS and does not rely on ICC, according to the company.
Ink level is also a very important point in signage printing.
In many cases, the total ink limit can be lower than 200 per cent, due to the third party ink and media.
However ICC profiles cannot meet the accurate colour under 200 per cent of the total ink limit, said Siliconcrag, which would ideally recommend changing the ink or media in such cases.
However, in practical terms that is not necessarily possible but, according to Siliconcrag, Topaz RIP was designed to help users to resolve that problem and to get the best result.
Topaz RIP is said to have 256 x 256 levels of gradation, which with the RIP's screen technology can resolve problems of poor quality in white point.
Topaz RIP is claimed to enable RIP and print on the fly with no limitation in file size and print output size.
Even 100-metre long printing can be possible, without overload in memory and the CPU.
Topaz RIP requires three gigbytes of free hard disk space only, no matter what size of file or printing job being handled, said Siliconcrag.
That option is said to be useful when nesting (media saving), whilst the company said other RIPs only perform nesting after RIPping.
That is not useful in large format printing for the signage market.
Topaz has Qubis Screen technology, which is said to enable double-256 (256 x 256) level true colour gradation, which is said to differentiate printouts from Topaz from that of others.
It also has a photo-quality interpolation algorithm that enables the best scaled up output from small pictures, added the company.
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