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SIMPle In-RIP IMPoSItIonby Martin Bailey, Chief technology officer, Global Graphics Software

IntroductionEven though there are signs that worldwide economic conditions are starting

to improve, it's clear that it'll be tough for print service providers for some time

to come. Competition from other publication routes, such as the web or

interactive TV, continues to pressure sectors of the print industry. Over capacity

(and therefore reduced prices) are causing problems for others.

Even where there is no direct competition from other publication channels,

there can still be some indirect effect. The ability of the Internet to deliver

content extremely rapidly, and with multiple variations for specific targeted

recipients leads to a demand for more rapid turnaround and shorter print runs

... even on those jobs that could not be conveniently or cost-effectively

delivered by the worldwide web.

Small print companiesMany small commercial printers can be reasonably well placed to manage these conditions if they respond

appropriately. Their customers tend to be local, and much of the work they print could not be moved to other

publication routes with an equivalent effect for a reasonable price. Their challenge is, as it always has been,

delivering what the customer wants, at the quality they expect, when they request it and at a price they can accept.

The most important competition for these small print service providers are the similar companies in the same

town, and the greatest difficulty in closing a new sale is often the perceived slowness and difficulty of buying a

printing job. That clearly places the emphasis on improved customer service; reducing turn-round time and errors.

Price is, of course, usually a factor as well.

An effective response to these challenges must address all aspects of the business from sales and marketing

policies, to process control in the press room, to rapid and accurate delivery of invoices.

In the prepress department much of the emphasis will always fall on increasing efficiency. It's vital to move

jobs through the workflow as rapidly and as accurately as possible, while using as few resources as possible, while

maintaining reliability. As run-lengths get shorter, a larger and larger proportion of the production costs for a job are

in prepress. It takes virtually the same amount of work to create a plate for 500 copies as it does for 50 000.

Increasing efficiency and reducing costs in prepress will therefore become more important to the bottom

line of print companies.

Few products are designed

for the needs of two-up

and four-up printers.

Manual imposition is slow

and expensive. Simple In-

RIP imposition is

automated and generates

plates faster.

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Prepress workflowsSo what is the prepress workflow in a small print company?

A medium-size company (let's say 12-20 employees) will have one or more proofing devices, and one or more

film-setters and/or CTP plate-setters. The RIPs driving those devices will be fed from imposition design programs

such as Preps, DynaStrip, ImpoStrip, Metrix or the like. The imposition program will often be used as the control

panel for the whole prepress room.

On the other hand, a smaller company with fewer than a dozen employees, will often not have a dedicated

imposition program. There are relatively few products specifically designed for the needs of B4 and B2 (two-up

and four-up) printers. The most common imposition tools therefore allow for vastly more complex layouts than a

typical small print-site will commonly encounter, and come with a price tag to match.

Almost all jobs that a printer will run however, do need imposition. Even a single-page flyer needs imposing for

efficient use of paper and press time. In the absence of a dedicated imposition program, a number of methods are

used to position pages on sheets, and to add appropriate register and trim marks, color bars, etc. This sector of

the print industry is in active transition from film-based workflows towards computer to plate and digital print,

which removes the possibility of film stripping for the simplest impositions.

Perhaps the most common approach to imposition in the smallest companies is to use the same page layout tools

that are used for creation of pages in the first place, or for correction of files submitted by clients. A job might be

constructed from scratch in press sheets, by designing each 'page' as a printer's spread, ready to be plated directly.

Alternatively, jobs constructed as single pages may be re-imported into QuarkXPress®, Adobe® InDesign®, etc to

build sheets.

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This technique suffers from a number of disadvantages:

● Job pages may need converting between formats several times during the workflow, perhaps from a

native application file into PostScript, and then into PDF, followed by an export to EPS to allow

placement on a sheet. Although modern conversion software is significantly more robust than it might

have been a few years ago, each conversion step raises the possibility of a translation error.

● More importantly, many of those conversion steps require several configuration items to be set

correctly in order to fit with the rest of the workflow. It can be very hard to determine optimal

configurations to avoid errors with spot colors, fonts and gradient fills, for instance.

● The process is very manual, often requiring each page to be individually placed in the correct position,

increasing the time taken, and the possibility of operator error.

● Because it's so manual, it's also a process that requires some expertise in understanding the

construction of printer's spreads; the page order, page positioning (including compensation for creep),

and page rotation. A job requiring expertise tends to be one that requires a higher-paid employee.

● If exactly the same imposition layouts are used time and time again, a template can be constructed to

make repeat uses faster and easier. On the other hand, jobs with different page sizes, or numbers of

pages, may require reconstruction of those templates, increasing the work required and the likelihood of

a mistake being made.

Much of the rest of the prepress workflow in such sites is entirely encapsulated within the RIP for the proofer,

film-setter or plate-setter. Any trapping required is often performed in-RIP, as is color management for the proofing

printers.

It's clear that one of the major sources of delay, errors and expense in the smallest prepress departments is in the

manual processing of imposition requirements.

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Improving efficiencyStarting with the Harlequin® RIP Genesis ReleaseTM, Global Graphics has

introduced support for simple automated imposition. It's explicitly designed for

the smallest print service provider, printing on small-format conventional presses,

and on digital production presses.

For many years the configuration of a Harlequin RIP has been built around what are

called “page setups”. In a sense they are job tickets, that will be applied to all jobs

arriving at the RIP. Page setups allow the user to define which device jobs will be

output to, at what resolution, along with all the standard processes such as screening

and calibration. They are also used to control all of the functionality provided in the

Harlequin RIP beyond straightforward interpreting and rendering, such as in-RIP color

management, OPI and DCS support, trapping and color separation.

In the Harlequin RIP a page setup can now also control automated in-RIP

imposition that will be applied to all jobs that use that page setup. An imposition

setup might, for instance, pair up pages for saddle-stitching, complete with trim,

fold and register marks, and with compensation for creep.

If the print service provider prints similar jobs consistently, one imposition setup,

used as a part of one or more page setups, can be used time and time again.

Rather than needing to spend time on manually placing every page, the operator

need now only submit the job to a RIP with the correct imposition setup and it will be handled automatically.

In many cases, even a variation in page size will not require different imposition setups to be constructed. The fold

for saddle-stitched work can be retained at the same position over ranges of page sizes, reducing the need to

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adjust folding equipment. When producing step & repeat, or cut & stack work, the in-RIP imposition can be

instructed to automatically fit as many copies as possible onto each sheet, depending on the page and media sizes.

Different numbers of pages in a job will also be accounted for by the software, adjusting creep compensation and

sheet count as required.

Many of the disadvantages of manual imposition techniques are magnified if there is a need for a late press change,

moving the job from one press to another, or printing on a different sheet size, because the press may be sitting

idle, unable to start the next job. Late binding of imposition, applying it in the RIP that creates the plates, avoids the

loss of time and effort involved if painstaking manual page placement must be discarded and the work re-done.

The same job file can simply be RIPed again, using a different imposition setup, and the plates for the new press or

paper can be ready very rapidly.

A number of imposition schemes are supported in the Harlequin RIP, including:

One-up (1 & 2 sided) These are provided to allow the addition of crop and

register marks, text slug lines and color bars to the output.

One-up is also used for Tiling (introduced in Genesis

release (v7.1) and for automatically scaling pages to fit the

size of the media, e.g. for point of sale materials.

N-Up (1 & 2 sided) These are similar to the 2-up & 4-up selections available in

some printer drivers, printing multiple pages in reader

order on each press sheet. These schemes are provided

primarily for the digital print market place.

Cut & stack (1 & 2 sided) The most efficient method for printing a relatively small

number of copies of multi-page jobs that will be wire or

comb bound.

Step & repeat (1 & 2-sided) For post-cards, labels, etc.

Saddle-stitch (left, right & top-bound) For brochures, calendars and other booklets, available in 2-

and 4-up*. Four-up saddle-stitch can be head-to-head,

foot-to-foot or side-to side to suit the dimensions of the

page, the plate and your bindery equipment.

Saddle-stitch, stepped and repeated For smaller booklets.

Perfect-bound, four-up

(left & right bound)* For perfect-bound books etc. A variety of geometries,

including head-to-head and foot-to-foot are available.

Position of the pages on the sheet can be fully controlled, allowing for non-printing margins on digital devices,

leaving space for the gripper on a sheet-fed press, or making laps for saddle-stitching.

If in-RIP imposition is applied using the same imposition setup for output to a proofing device and a plate-setter,

the page positioning, fold and trim marks etc will be accurately proofed, even when it's necessary to scale down

the press sheet to fit on a smaller proofing device.

* 4-up saddle-stitch

and perfect-bound

schemes were added

in Harlequin RIP,

Genesis Release

(v.7.1).

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September 2007

www.globalgraphics.com

Global Graphics Software Inc.

31 Nagog Park , Suite 315, ActonMA 01720, USATel: +1-978-849-0011Fax: +1-978-849-0012

Global Graphics Software Ltd

2nd Floor, Building 2030 Cambourne Business Park Cambourne, Cambridge CB23 6DW UKTel: +44 (0)1954 283100Fax: +44 (0)1954 283101

Global Graphics KK

704 AIOS Toranomon Bldg.1-6-12 Nishishimbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0003JapanTel: +81-3-6273-3740Fax: +81-3-6273-3741

the smarter alternative , the Harlequin RIP and Genesis Release are trademarks of Global Graphics Software Limited which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Global Graphics Software is a registered trademark ofGlobal Graphics SA. Adobe Indesign and PostScript are trademarks of Adobe Systems Inc which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Copyright © 2007 Global Graphics Software Ltd. All rights reserved.

one OPEN ARCHITECTURE Many PDL APPLICATIONS InFInIte OPPORTUNITIES

In the same way, the Harlequin RIP can make CIP3 PPF files for ink-key pre-setting on press for imposed jobs,

simply by re-submitting the job to a RIP using a different page setup, which includes the same imposition setup.

not just for offset printThe in-RIP imposition in the Harlequin RIP has been carefully designed to be appropriate for use when generating

final copy on devices other than an offset press. Many digital presses can benefit from the same imposition

schemes as offset presses.

Enterprise-level digital printers will find the N-Up and saddle-stitch schemes particularly useful.

The tiling, scaling and page rotation options will also ensure fast and high-quality results in wide-format printing and

flexo work.

More complex jobsThe simple in-RIP imposition in the Harlequin RIP is designed to deliver maximum efficiency and reliability for the

majority of jobs in a very small print site. Many such sites will continue to receive occasional jobs that the in-RIP

functionality does not address. The techniques used by those print shops now for all imposition jobs can still be

applied to these more complex requirements.

The Harlequin RIP can work well in slightly larger print sites, with dedicated imposition software, too. Jobs can be

sent from imposition tools as PostScript, or as PDF. When used with the optional JDF Enabler module, a Harlequin

RIP can also accept imposed jobs as a JDF job, leading to rapid job delivery from the imposition tool, and

increased operator throughput.

A print site where a significant proportion of work requires complex enough imposition that a dedicated

imposition design tool is in use can also gain by using the in-RIP imposition in the Harlequin RIP, when processing

jobs that can be processed using one of the supported imposition schemes. The sheer speed and efficiency of an

in-RIP solution can pay back the investment in in-RIP imposition very rapidly, even if it is not used for every job.