What is a Raster Image Processor?
well lindsay, a raster image processor is a component used in a printing system which produces a bitmap. The bitmap is then sent to a printing device for output. The input may be a page description in a high-level page description language such as PostScript, Portable Document Format, XPS or another bitmap of higher or lower resolution than the output device. In the latter case, the RIP applies either smoothing or interpolation algorithms to the input bitmap to generate the output bitmap. Raster image processing is the process and the means of turning vector digital information such as a PostScript file into a high-resolution raster image. Originally RIPs were a rack of electronic hardware which received the page description via some interface (eg RS232) and generated a “hardware bitmap output” which was used to enable or disable each pixel on a real-time output device such as an optical film scanner. A RIP can be implemented either as a software component of an operating system or as
A raster image processor (RIP) is a piece of the printing system that creates a raster image or bitmap prior to the image being sent to a printer for printing. Typically, the input the raster image processor receives is vector-digital information that is encoded in the form of a high-level page description language (PDL) such as XPS, PostScript or Portable Document Format (PDF). However, the input the RPI processes can be another bitmap. In this case, the RPI applies smoothing and interpolation algorithms before the final output bitmap or raster is produced. A typical raster image processor is a software application such as Ghostscript or GhostPCL that performs various stages of raster/bitmap production on the computer. However, some printers boast firmware or dedicated hardware raster image processing units that perform their raster processing on the printer unit itself. In previous years, the raster image processor was a piece of hardware which received the input data via an interfac
