Digital Photographic Printing is about emulating continuous tone. It is extremely sensitive to how CMYK inks are blended to create light, middle, and dark tones. In order to produce a photographic emulation, the transition from each tonal level must be harmonious. With the use of light colors, a smoother softer blend of tones can be utilized to create an invisible dot pattern. This control of blending light colors to dark is controlled by the Rip. The Rip also controls the smoothness of gradients, a sweep of light to dark shades. The transition for gradients from RGB to CMYK is greatly effected by the linearization and math used by the Rip. Linearization is the process of evenly distributing each primary color (CMYK) density from 0% to the deepest value which is 100%.  This is just like a grey scale used in photography, except that the process controls each color not just black. The smoothness of the gradation is affected also by the bit stream. (8bits vs. 16bits) Photoshop which has moved up to 16 bits offers more steps of tone. Only a few Rips, such as Evolution use a longer bit stream to accomplish smoother gradations.

Another problem occurs when black ink is used instead of gray or color inks forming grey in the mid tones and highlights. The result is what is now described as the "pepper effect." It was given the name because the black channel does not blend invisibly in the mid tones, but rather sticks out like pepper on a chicken platter. So it is necessary, in order to produce an invisible blend, to use either grey ink or a accurate blend of CMY with Light Cyan and Light Magenta to form gray in light and midtones. Evolution Rip has a special CMY neutral blend, which assures a perfectly neutral gray scale. This is where the skill of creating a color profile comes in. The color profile maker can alter the blend of colors or grey ink to form a smooth relationship.

The most important aspect in digital photographic print making is the interaction between the Rip and the color management. The Rip sets the stage for the profile making and together they distinguish the quality of the profile.

Photoshop Setup Photoshop is the most powerful Image software on the market and is truly the backbone of this industry. Photoshop basically allows you to print through it to the printer driver. The printer driver is basically a rip. The difference between the driver and a full rip is a rip allows you to control the CMYK output as well as the RGB input.  You can create your own profiles through the driver. You choose the paper and resolution for your profile in the same way as you would choose the printer's setup. I like to try to get richer color when making a profile. For Gloss, Semi-Gloss, Pearl, and Satin Papers choose the Gloss Setting. Then bring into Photoshop your RGB Patch set made from your Color Management Software or from ours. Make sure you do not attach any profile to it when you bring it into Photoshop. I suggest you setup Photoshop as follows:

By setting up the Color Management Policies to off and asking you when there is a mismatch what you want to do allows you to leave the profile off, change profiles, or keep the embedded profile. You are in complete control.

To know how to place and use the profile made through Photoshop download the following file Printing Through Photoshop

The choice of your RGB setup is quite important. There are several choices in PhotoShop; however, often the setup is SRGB. You may find using Color Match very pleasing for smooth open tone images or Adobe 1998 for dramatic rich deeper tones. There are several other RGB profiles to choose from. I would recommend trying different ones. In Edit in Photoshop is where you can setup which RGB profile you want to use. To make a change from present RGB profile in PhotoShop go to Image/Mode/Assign Profile and choose. Some Rips accept your embedded profile and some need to assign it. The problem comes when you receive someone's RGB with the name of Amanda or some home made scanning profile. That is why it may be important for you to choose a rip that accepts embedded profiles.

Scanning Scanning a transparency can be difficult because transparencies have such enormous contrast range. Look for a scanner that offers a wide dynamic range. Often in the past the only scanners to meet this criteria were drum scanners. There are scanners that come close to the desired 4.0. Capturing the range of the transparency is essential in order to produce great prints.