A Ms. Colleen Fernman from Baltimore, Maryland recently contacted us asking “what in the world is a RIP and why do printers care about them?”

Hi, Ms. Colleen, and thanks for asking us such a tricky and sophisticated question! In past blogs, I have mentioned a RIP, and promised to discuss it a bit further in the future. Thanks to you, that time is now!

By now, you know in our professional printing industry, we just love our acronyms! RIP stands for Raster Image Processor. Pretty fancy, right? Now you know why we call it by its nickname.

In the simplest terms, a RIP is the translator between a computer and a printer.

Basically, there are two types of RIPs: hardware and software. In many cases, software RIPs are more than adequate to get the job done for you. If you’re just trying to print out a letter or bill, or something you downloaded from the internet, then the quality of the output is probably not terribly important.

However, if you make your living by printing picture perfect pictures and colors, then you not only need a hardware RIP, but an AMAZING, FANTASTIC, SUPER SOUPED UP RIP! As Baltimore’s favorite professional printer, we have these high-powered hardware RIPs attached to all of our production printers, to ensure the highest quality and most accurate and vibrant colors.

Our RIP devices are calibrated daily by our crack team of graphic design professionals to make sure the colors that are interpreted by the printer through the RIP from our computers are spot on. This will assure color accuracy with every job.

Knowing about RIPs is a little like peeking under the hood of a high performance car…cool to see and know about, not likely to alter the course of your life though. As always, your professional Baltimore printer is here to educate you and help in any way possible!

Rip