There are lots of things you can get for twenty or thirty grand: a flash new car, a deposit on a new flat, a modest speedboat. All pretty desirable purchases that will hopefully leave the buyer with a sense of having got something nice for their hard-earned cash.

By contrast, a printing RIP, consisting to the untrained eye of just a row of humble PCs, is not quite so much fun to shop for. While many printers would never begrudge splashing out on a bit of machinery, treasuring their shiny new bits of kit perhaps just as much as a new set of wheels, software can seem very expensive when physically it is so insubstantial.

But the phrase ‘what you see is what you get’ really doesn’t apply where software is concerned. A RIP system may look unimpressive, but a digital print engine is useless without it. And the vital work it does behind the scenes is becoming ever-more important as printers seek to process more demanding high-quality and variable data files at ever-more breathtaking speeds.

Plenty would argue, then, that it’s about time printers started paying more respect to this vital bit of software – and, crucially, invest more in it to meet growing customer expectations. And while some might presume that because a RIP comes as part and parcel of a machine investment – and is included in the price – they have little choice in what they end up with. This is not, in fact, the case.

Although printers will indeed be limited to the RIP technology supplied with their machine when it comes to compatibility, most manufacturers will offer them the option of paying to have a scaled-up, more powerful version as and when they decide it’s needed. "The general architecture of most RIPs is such that it’s quite easy to scale the system up," explains John Davies, business strategy manager at Fujifilm. "Within the system, we can literally put in more RIPs and add more hardware to support those. So as work comes in, the system automatically pulls on more resources."

And press vendors won’t necessarily be affiliated with just one ripping system, but may have a choice of packages to cater for different needs. "To work with a Canon printer, we’ve got EFI, Prism and Creo technology within the portfolio," explains Canon European marketing group product manager Anthony White. "They all address different markets and all have their relative strengths."

Boosted firepower
So the technology is certainly there to allow printers to boost their RIP firepower. But the problem, apparently, is that some just don’t make the connection between the efficiency of their operation and the power of their RIP. 

"Everyone’s focused on the big chunk of metal that puts ink or toner on the paper, and can tend to think ‘oh blimey, I’m not spending €200,000 on a computer,’" says Screen vice-president of solutions and technology Tim Taylor. "But in reality that million-pound machine is worth nothing if it’s not getting data fast enough. So we’re always going to say people could benefit from paying a bit more for their RIP."

Many printers are reluctant to switch to a potentially more powerful RIP where the manufacturer offers a couple of different compatible brands. They have an urge to stick to what they know. "To a certain extent, printers stick to what they have first bought and are familiar with," says Canon’s White. "There’s a lot of ‘I’ve already bought it and my operator knows how to use it so I won’t change that interaction with the press.’"

This approach could be problematic, say the vendors, in a number of increasingly common printing scenarios. High-quality and variable data printing and use of more colours and special effects are all factors that could cause a basic RIP package to struggle, they say.

"There’s often a need for a fast RIP," says Kaspar Roos, associate director at document technology strategy and consulting firm InfoTrends. "If a printer does a lot of photobooks, they are very RIP-intensive documents – or if they do variable data, there’s a high RIP requirement."

"One of the features you can do now is applying a transparency feature to variable data, so you’ve got text blending into an image and each one of those is unique," adds Fujifilm’s Davies. "That puts more demand on what processing is required."

Basic package
Of course, not all printers will process high-quality, variable data products or products with special effects. There are still, most would agree, many printing scenarios where actually a fairly basic ripping package will do nicely.

Super-high-quality jobs are certainly not the mainstay of every printing firm, points out Davies. "Wide-format work could potentially be the most demanding of a RIP because of its large format and so large file size. But a lot of this is actually low-resolution for commercial print, so there doesn’t need to be lots of processing power to manage that," he says.

And actually, the kind of variable data jobs that come up most often for printers at the moment, such as printing of bills and statements, don’t require a particularly powerful RIP. "When you’re pulling in variable text data the impact on the RIP isn’t that great; the things that are demanding are complex imagery and very image rich content," explains DST Output managing director Jeremy Walters. He also explains that DST is one of only a small number of printers processing lots of image-rich variable mail at present.

"Look at how much variable data there is in the market. It is as low as 5% and 10% of the total print – or even less," confirms Davies.

And as the rarity of variable imagery transpromo jobs suggests, customers might not yet be valuing variable content (or willing to pay) enough for this service, to justify printers spending more on a stronger RIP, says Taylor. "So the case for a stronger RIP hinges on variable data’s value," he says. "The value has to match the cost of the technology."

 "If you’ve got to spend lots on an RIP just to ensure that your one job a month demanding a stronger RIP is processed very quickly, then you’re probably going to think it’s not worth it," he adds. "Instead, you would just leave the job ripping overnight then you would print it the next morning."

But some would counter that this is a rather defeatist attitude. Global Graphic Software chief technology officer Martin Bailey says that variable imagery is actually slowly but surely gaining popularity, and that printers should be equipping themselves for this offering as a way of differentiating themselves from the competition.

"Printers keep looking at variable data and thinking there’s not enough of it around, but they aren’t thinking about selling it in a way that means it might be well-received," says Bailey. "If they expect marketing departments to understand what they might be able to do, they’re never going to succeed in selling it."

Also, there are those who would point out that a buyer’s speed and quality demands are only going to become more exacting as time goes on. "The old question of ‘can we have it faster, can it be better quality?’ is something that has been going on for years and that trend won’t change in my opinion," says Terry Garvey, European sales director at EFI. "Quality is certainly very important on things like labels, and we see quality as being one of the key things for signage too. When, for example, you’re getting into smaller format packaging – small pharmaceutical packaging – the quality of that needs to be very good to ensure very small-format text is legible."

So the case for finding the money to upgrade seems, for some, a strong one. But complicating the issue is the assertion, from some quarters, that streamlining the ripping process doesn’t necessarily have to entail spending more.

The first argument a printer should perhaps consider before splashing out on more RIP threads – and the hardware to host them – is that many will be able to speed up files being ripped to their machine by first fine-tuning their pre-flighting processes.

"People need to look at their pre-flighting before thinking about investing in a stronger RIP," says Fujifilm’s Davies, explaining that this is something some are tempted to cut corners on when they’re in a rush. "The need for pre-flighting has probably come down over time because people are delivering better PDF files, but people still need to strip out any excess data at the pre-flighting stage instead of going straight to printing."

In fact, says Canon’s White, RIPs often have in-built capabilities to check that layers within files have been properly compressed for instance, but printers often aren’t utilising these. "A significant proportion of printers use the RIP purely to rasterise images and aren’t using the in-built functionality. In fact, they may have bought software to do that job, not realising that their RIP has it," he says. "So I think printers should be interrogating their RIP a bit more. In a lot of cases there’s a lot of latent productivity there."

There is another argument that printers must consider before whole-heartedly embracing the idea of paying more for a RIP. This is the idea that manufacturers should be working to ensure that the cost of the RIP, in most cases, stays as a certain percentage of the cost of the machine it drives.

Paying to have more RIP threads and supporting hardware added on to power an ever-more demanding operation is all very well, explains Global Graphic Software’s Bailey, but the printer should at some point perhaps question why the manufacturer isn’t working to create software sophisticated enough to drive complex operations while still utilising only a limited number of RIP strands and computers.

"I think the important thing is to stop thinking about a faster RIP as necessarily being more expensive," says Bailey. "People have said ‘how on earth can you claim to be the most sophisticated and fastest but also cheap?’, and we point out that if the RIP is faster people don’t have to source as much hardware, they don’t have to pay as many windows licenses. So as the software becomes faster and more efficient the total bill drops."

Staying synched
And market forces should ensure that the price for this more sophisticated software doesn’t get out of sync with the overall kit spend, as it would if the printer was relying on just adding more and more threads to boost productivity, says Canon’s White.

"I don’t think the processing power going up is necessarily going to increase the cost," he says. "The processing power of the RIPs we sell has become infinitely more powerful in the eight years that I’ve been at Canon, but prices haven’t really risen. It’s like when you get a new laptop or computer – it’s more powerful, but there’s probably no increase in cost."

The danger, says Screen’s Taylor, is that, because different RIP packages are built in fundamentally different ways, some manufacturers may be unable to rise to the challenge of boosting RIP firepower without adding on bulky and expensive hardware. "We know of instances where someone with another kind of printer and RIP package has to have a separate room for all of their RIP hardware. We would only need 16 computers for the same speed machine," he says. "So there’s clearly some different level of intelligence going on that enables us to process similar amounts of data but with much less hardware. Clearly making a RIP stronger involves a lot of hardware, but it also involves a lot of intelligence in terms of how you manage the data and the tools you put inside it."

Realising that different RIPs rely on different ways of boosting productivity – with some entailing higher costs – will be of most benefit to those shopping for new kit. Armed with the knowledge that some manufacturers seem to be in possession of RIPs that can be made more powerful without necessarily just layering RIP threads up, printers may well start to use this when choosing between similar machines.

InfoTrends’ Roos, however, says that most printers won’t, regardless of how a manufacturer’s RIP is built, typically have to pay over around 20 or 25% of the overall kit spend to get the optimum performance out of their machine at present. But they may have to be careful in future. That is, when buying the next generation of super-fast, high-quality and larger-format printers (at the next Drupa, perhaps), printers may have to be careful not to pay over the odds for multiple threads and hardware for a RIP that will keep up with the machine.

"What we’re seeing in the industry today is that digital printers are getting faster, and at Drupa digital B2 was announced so the devices are getting wider; and then there’s this whole thing of adding multiple colours," he says. "So the challenge is for RIP providers today to keep investing to make the technology powerful enough to cope with this without adding more hardware."

So, the question is, ‘Should printers be paying more for their RIPs?’. The answer is – ‘It’s complicated’. In the main, printers could certainly it seems do with taking a closer look at their pre-press processes and how these might be compromising the speed with which files are transferred to their machine and so printed. Those who are printing image-rich variable content such as transpromo mail and photobooks, very high-quality work and larger formats and wider colour gamuts now available in digital printing will certainly need to consider upgrading."

But how much more they should be spending on pre-flighting and ripping is open to debate. It will depend on whether the technology has latent functionality that they’re not yet utilising. Once all available functionality is being used, adding more RIP threads and the hardware needed to support this could be a good shout, and shouldn’t push the RIP spend out of line with the overall kit spend.

But in the future, printers may want to become RIP-savvy not just so they realise the importance of not cutting corners and costs when it comes to the RIP. They will also need to pay the RIP more respect so they know which questions to ask their machine supplier to ensure their RIP will be powerful enough to drive their machine without breaking the bank.