WhiteRIP: Print Guide

WHITERIP PRINT GUIDE The printing process of WhiteRIP is very linear and simple.

Note: be sure to configure the RIP software and create the file for the print correctly by following the related guides.

1)

Open the image you want to print, dragging it inside the software window or using the “Open” button.

Depending on the versions, you might have an internal bridge from which you can visualize the previews of the images, psd files included.

2) Open the “Print” menu and select the desired print environment, through the dropdown.

3)

Open

the

“Image”

menu

and

set

the

desired

print

size.

Tip: please import files of a large enough size in order to print. Enlarging a picture through this step in the printing process can greatly reduce the print quality. It’s possible to check the resize ratio through the “Tools” menu.

It’s also encouraged to set the choke value to 2/3 in order to avoid smearing of the white ink.

4)

5)

Continue looping through the menus, left to right, and set the print position.

Note that the automatic placement only works if the margins are set correctly Visualize the print through the preview function, in order to check all the settings are correct.

Note: the error “wrong image size”, means that the image and margins cannot fit in the defined table dimension. Once you open the preview, if the image exits the printable area, it will be moved back automatically on the print area.

6) The last step of the process is to use the “Print” function, by right clicking the image and selecting the related button.

IN-DEPTH GUIDE: Following the simple steps above, anyone can print a given picture quickly and with a discrete quality. White RIP is a software dedicated to many different printers and configurations and it allows the use of a lot of advanced tools that will help you creating prints of the highest quality, while optimizing the production speed.

PICKING THE ENVIROMENT The environment is nothing more than a set of options, such as resolution, dot size, color profile, etc..

As a default setting, you will find environments named like this: “Printer model / Color of the printed material / Print quality – color quantity / Printing of white and color at the same time”

COLOR OF THE PRINTED MATERIAL : WHITE  White base, in this case the software will only print the color, we can also use this setting with very bright bases, since the color will cover enough even without the white base. It is not necessary to contour image, and the print speed is higher.

COLOR  Colored base, any type of color except black. The software will print a fully white underbase and the colors on top of it, black color included. It’s possible to remove the areas colored with the same color of the printed material from the printed image with the magic wand, in order to have a lighter printing process.

BLACK  Black base or really dark materials. The software will print an optimized version of the white underbase, removing it from below dark colors and the black will not be printed, since the printed media color will be used instead. If the image has a black background, it won’t need to be contourned.

Suggestion: try the three different print modes in order to have a better idea of how the software optimizes the prints.

Tip: for dark colored t-shirts, you can rip the image in the print queue, selecting the “black” profile and print only the white base, proceeding then to rip the image with the colored profile (whilst not moving the platen) and only print the

colored base (black included). This results in a lighter print, while respecting the colors of the printed image. This option can be present under the name of DARK COLOR.

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Note how a new environment has been switched and a new rip has been created.

The last step is to print only the colored base.

PRINT QUALITY The number you see in the environment corresponds to the resolution, the higher the number is (1440 is higher than 360), the higher is the printed quality.

360  draft/low quality 720  normal 1440  high quality Obviously, time and ink usage vary proportionally, depending on the chosen quality. Note that it’s possible to set different qualities for both the printing of white and color.

PRINT OPTIONS

WHEN TO USE “SINCRO PRINT ”: “Sincro print” is a feature tha will allow you to print both white and colors at the same time. Since the printhead is required to work twice as much, there are still some images where the traditional two pass method is still suggested: when an image needs to be light or has flat colors, the traditional method is still suggested.

WHEN TO USE THE “FAST INK CONTROL ” PANEL Selecting the image and pressing F8, you will be taken to the Fast ink control panel, from where you will be able to set the various print channels one by one. If, for example, the image is being printed too blue, you can lower the cyan channel.

Note: You cannot verify the settings through the software, but the correction has to be made after the print.

Whenever we use a generic environment and the prints on a certain material have ink usage derived issues, we can use the fast ink control feature in order to override the print profile.

WHEN TO USE “MONODIRECTIONAL” The difference between mono and bidirectional is that the plotter can either print on the left to right printhead movement (mono directional) or on both left to right and right to left (bidirectional). Obviously the bidirectional printing method is roughly twice as fast. This method, though, only works well if the printer is well aligned (usually there is an appropriate utility or function in the printer’s menu) and that the distance between the printed material and the printhead remains constant and does not go higher than a given amount (depends on the printhead, but usually around 4-5mm).

It’s advised to use the mono directional method whenever we are printing thin lines ( either graphical or fonts from 12pt below) and in the case of noise in the color.

DOT SIZE The dot size allows you to set a size for the dots. The smaller the dots, the more precise the print becomes, but a higher resolution is required, since the printhead will deposit a low amount of color. Small dots are preferred on images with shadings. On the other hand, bigger drops will require a lower resolution or ink limiting, since the amount of color deposited by the printhead is higher.

BOOSTER

:

It’s possible to higher the tone of the colors by increasing the Booster parameter in the image settings menu. The value is usually set between 10 and 25, but be careful with it, since it’s a parameter that does not follow the color profile chosen. This could result in prettier images, but with colors that do not match the original file.

USING ALL OF THE TOOLS TOGETHER : Using a higher resolution in order to achieve a higher quality, can be tricky since the amount of ink dropped could be too high for the material to absorb: in this case the ink limit function avaible through the “fast ink control” can solve the presented issues. Another solution could be using smaller drops.

A lot of the settings depend on the printed materials, but having a good knowledge of the tools offered by the software, you can fix any issue with the print. The professional solution is the creation of ad hoc profiles for every single material through the use of spectrophotometer and icc creation softwares.

ICC PROFILES The default ICC profiles are realized with a spectrophotometer at both 12 and 24mb for the following resolutions: • • •

360x360 , 720x720 , 1440x1440

The 24mb ones can be set with ink limit levels of the various colors to 100.

The 12mb ones have different values that are detailed in the txt file of the icc directory.