Colour Management

Professional photographers, design studios and screen printers should have access to the latest in colour management technology. That's why Megarip is built on the same full 16-bit engine that powers Serendipity Software's world class Blackmagic and Veripress proofing systems. The colour management system is ICC v4.2 compliant, using tools like paper profiling and a selection of advanced ink limiting and linearisation algorithms to ensure your images are committed to paper, vinyl, or canvas exactly as you envision them. 16-bit colour control faithfully reproduces vivid, realistic landscapes and subtle flesh tones. Sophisticated gray-balancing maintains all the nuance and drama of black and white images, providing blacker blacks and whiter whites.

16-bit Processing

Megarip's engine performs all calculations and processing in 16-bit rather than the customary 8-bit, from imaging and colour management through to scaling, screening and rendering. Photographers working with RAW-sourced image files and designers manipulating those files know that 16-bit processing provides over 250 times the colour depth of 8-bit processing. A 16-bit engine gives Megarip finer control and allows it to calculate the differences between black and white, light and dark, with far greater accuracy. The result - high precision image reproduction, smoother transitions into highlight and shadows and elimination of visual banding in gradients and vignettes. This improved render quality means images print the way they are designed; that photographs print with all colour, depth, tonality and realism.

Gray Balancing

Neutral gray balance has long been a goal in printing. Creating gray tones without any colour cast using a CMYK (or simulated RGB) printer ink set is not a simple task. A task that, until now, has been left to ICC profiles, with varying results, dependent upon print conditions. Recently developed, Megarip's linearisation algorithms are designed specifically to balance your printer's CMY or RGB gray output, while bringing its ink channels to a linear state. Essentially, this means your printer output is gray balanced before it hits the output ICC profile. Megarip does the heavy lifting before creating your ICC profile, allowing the profile software to fine-tune your gray output with greater accuracy. The result - optimal gray balanced prints.

Black Point Compensation

Black Point Compensation ensures the full dynamic colour range of your photographs and images are correctly converted to your printer's gamut and that prints maintain all the fine shadow detail of their source material. Megarip is about data integrity and colour fidelity.

RGB Support

For photographers concerned with data integrity and image fidelity, Megarip allows files to be rendered in RGB using industry standard ICC profiles and rendering intents. Megarip also supports RGB print modes for supported RGB-enabled printers. Media configurations use RGB output ICC profiles and custom gray-balance focused linearisation.

Total Printer Control

Megarip uses a paper profiling system that individually characterises print media based on colourspace, output resolution, printer ink set and the paper being used. Users can assess and select which dots will be fired by the printhead for each ink channel, choose from a number of intelligent ink limiting algorithms and linearise a printer based on a customisable set of gradation curve points. Paper profiling gets the most out of your printer's available gamut, allowing for accurate reproduction of wide-gamut photographic images and Pantone colours used by popular desktop design packages. Control of the printhead and ink limiting also means a paper profile can be optimised to use the least amount of ink to achieve the colour densities required - an important factor for businesses using a lot of ink but want to keep operating costs down.

Plug and Print

You may be thinking paper profiling sounds great in theory, but where to start? Serendipity Software has done the work for you... with pre-configured, downloadable Media for a number of popular medium and large-format inkjet printers, resolutions and paper combinations. Load them into Megarip, linearise your printer and you're ready to print!

Nesting

Efficient use of media resources has a direct effect on a business' bottom-line. Megarip allows users to make the most of available print media with its Nesting feature. Using automatic nesting, print queues are set to collect, intelligently arrange and auto-rotate incoming jobs to best use the space available on your print media, minimising waste. Nesting can be configured according to percentage of sheet coverage; number of jobs; minimum or maximim media length; idle wait time; or be initiated manually at any time. If manual nesting is required, the built-in Studio application enables Megarip users to manually position or tile images for printing with it's easy to use visual interface.

Media Control and Tracking

Megarip's media tracking feature means never having to guess how much paper is left on the roll. Media configurations include the option to define sheet size and quantity or paper roll width and length, then track both the total area of jobs printed and the amount of media used. If your business uses multiple paper types for printing jobs, Megarip allows you to assign a Media paper type to a printer so it only prints jobs for that paper. Any other jobs submitted are processed and placed in a holding queue until you've changed the paper and re-assigned the print media, at which point all jobs held for the new paper will automatically start printing.

AirPrint

With Serendipity's AirPrint support you can print to any device supported by Blackmagic and Megarip, right from your iPad. There's no software or drivers to install - simply select the device from the print dialog, dial in the number of copies and watch it go. AirPrint was added in Apple's iOS 4.2 and allows printing from iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Unlimited Printers

Megarip supports all major brands of inkjet printers. Printer drivers are licensed on a per manufacturer basis. A driver suite of choice comes included with Megarip and allows for output to any supported printer model made by the selected manufacturer. Extra printer licenses are available separately. In addition, Megarip can run as many local or remote printers as are available on your network. If your business uses a preferred brand of printer, the software will install ready to run all of them.

Screen Printing

Megarip features a screen print mode, designed for printing film separations with an inkjet printer. Files submitted for processing are separated into individual plates. Each plate is printed as a black separation with halftone dots applied at the colour's respective screen angle. Users have the option of combining two or more overlaid inks for each plate to increase the density or alter the hue of the output film separations. Screen frequency, dot shape and screening angles can be defined and plates printed using standard halftone screening or Megarip's SuperCell mode, which produces better dot shape and higher quality output.

Render Effects

Megarip features a range of rendering effects that can be applied to a job. Available effects include Border, Centring, Convolution Matrix, Cropmarks, Edge Detect, Margins, Mirror, Negative, Pagenumber, Rectangle, Slugline, Unsharp Mask and Watermark. Examples of the Effects can be seen under the Technical Specifications - Rendering Effects section.

Submitting Images and DropSpots

Files can be submitted to Megarip using the Submit File menu option or Submit hotkey, but there are a number of other ways to submit images, suited to different workflows. Megarip can be set to continually poll DropFolders assigned to particular print configurations. Any files placed into a DropFolder are automatically processed and printed. Media and print configurations can be set up as standard Windows or Mac OS X printer destinations. Simply print from your desktop design application and files are submitted for printing through Megarip. For those who like to keep it simple, set up a DropZone with multiple DropSpots in your Megarip user interface. Drag and drop a file onto a DropSpot for instant output to a defined media configuration and printer.

Load Balancing

If your studio or site has multiple printers, Megarip can keep all of them printing continuously and efficiently. The Server tracks the number of jobs assigned to each output device, their total print area, progress status and print time. Using load balancing, print queues can be grouped and incoming jobs automatically allocated to the printer able to print them first. The same function can also assign a job to be output simultaneously by all available printers, without the need to resubmit - perfect for short-run poster work.

Multi-core Processing

Built on the latest code and taking full advantage of the increasing power of current and future multi-core CPUs, Megarip is made to be fast, very fast. Integral multi-core CPU support allows multiple jobs to be processed simultaneously, while multi-threading ensures all CPU cores are hard at work, even on single jobs. Megarip has the fastest imaging and rendering times of any RIP on the market. Saving on processing time means more time printing.

Multi-Platform

At Serendipity Software, we know that different studios and print environments need different computer, operating system and network solutions. Megarip is made to fit into any workflow and runs on any combination of Linux, Intel-based Mac OS X or Windows systems, straight out of the box.

Modules

Megarip has a series of integrated modules used to manage jobs as they pass through the colour management system and to monitor Server and Client activity. Each module can be run as a standalone window or as part of Megarip's user-configurable Monitor control panel.

Applications

Megarip includes a suite of customised Applications designed to provide the user with all the tools required to set up and maintain a RIP workflow. Functions include display and printer calibration, on screen softproofing, configuration backup and transfer and colour verification.