The Past, Present and Future of Print Digital Workflow (I)

In 2000, some people in Europe and America advocated a new concept for the prepress process—“ROOM”, ie, RIPOnceOutputMany (RIP once output several times), to ensure that the graphic and digital proofing images on the printing plate are the same, for this ideal, the software company Started to develop the imposition and digital proofing software for 1 bit TIFF, so the software process sequence naturally forms the following sequence: RIP → imposition version → digital proofing → output CTF/CTP.

The origin of digital workflow

The concept of printing digital workflow begins with prepress digital jobs.

When large format photofinishing machines became popular, the prepress department was busy looking for imposition software, and it was necessary to put 8 pages and 16 open pages together, and make a good one at a time. The big version of the system has to be determined that there is no problem with printing, so when CTP was invented, the demand for digital proofing also followed.

In the era of manual operation, the arrangement order and operation of different processes can be smoothly arranged and the production efficiency is naturally high. Before the imagesetter output the film, digital proofing and imposition were needed besides RIP, so the arrangement of these three production processes became the beginning of the digital workflow.

In 2000, some people in Europe and America advocated a new concept for the prepress process—“ROOM”, ie, RIPOnceOutputMany (RIP once output several times), to ensure that the graphic and digital proofing images on the printing plate are the same, for this ideal, the software company Started to develop the imposition and digital proofing software for 1 bit TIFF, so the software process sequence naturally forms the following sequence: RIP → imposition version → digital proofing → output CTF/CTP.

In 1997, prepress equipment suppliers in Taiwan only provided RIP software to the imagesetter. Generally, the Postscript file generated by the imposition software contains 8 or 16 pages of data. Once a page needs to be modified, the full version must be re-exported. Postscript The data is re-RIP once, proofing once, the process is very smooth. At that time, Taiwan's Fuxin Technology Corporation proposed the idea of ​​“mapping and proofing after RIP first,” and launched the “New Printing Prinect” process to streamline the processing of prepress production, three years ahead of the ROOM concept in Europe and America.

Because of the demand of ROOM, EFI, Starproof, Blackmagic, and later GMG have all successfully developed 1bitTIFF digital proofing software. They can even provide color management with ICC, and at the same time meet the level of contract proofing. After RIP, large-scale and digital proofing are implemented. The process satisfies the needs of plate making.

Since 2002, PDF has become more and more stable. Under the urging of large suppliers including Adobe and prepress equipment, the PDF process has achieved: PDF Preflight → Layout → RIP output digital proofing → RIP output CTF/CTP.

At this point, the PDF process has finally become the mainstream of the prepress market.

However, there are many prepress companies in the world, and they still love the ROOM process because the last-minute need for modification will always exist, and the 100% consistent desire for proofing and printing will make ROOM never fall behind.