PrintEngine™ Offline
- PrintEngine™ Offline
- The ixPressia off-line tool allows printer developers access to the power of the ixPressia image pipeline when away from the printer
ixPressia off-line is designed for ink jet printer developers.
It allows access to the full power of the image pipeline without needing to be attached to a printer. Instead it outputs bitmaps.
No need for external photo manipulation!
During the early stages of a printer development engineers often need to process images and then load them manually into the print head electronics. This is often a laborious and time consuming process. Typically the input image needs to be dithered, colour corrected, colour separated and then split into swathes for each of the printheads. This can take hours.
ixPressia off-line automates the process. It allows an image file to be read and then automatically does the full image processing (colour correction, dithering, splitting) and generates bitmap files for loading into the datapath electronics. Because the ixPressia PrintEngine™ knows about the location of the heads it generates the swathes for each head automatically.
Saves time
This automation can save hours of engineering time, particularly if the head layout needs to be changed, or if new test images for calibration or test need to be used.
Easy introduction to ixPressia technology
The ixPressia off-line tool is a modified version of the full ixPressia PrintEngine™, with the same full image pipeline. It is a great way to start using the technology. When you are ready you can upgrade to the full PrintEngine™ and automatically send the data straight to the heads.
Features
The information contained in this table may be subject to change due to our continuous development process. If you have a specific requirement please contact us.
| Image Pipeline | |
|---|---|
| Input images (bitmaps) | Input images (bitmaps) JPEG, TIFF (RGB & CMYK), PNG, BMP Either as a single bitmap or 1 image per colour plane. |
| Input images (vector) | PostScript (PS, EPS, PDF), DXF (optional), Gerber (Optional) |
| Colourspace | Monochrome, RGB, CMYK, CMYKcm, CMYKcmyk |
| Colour-conversion | ICC Colour profile (customer supplied when 6 colours or more) |
| Supported bit formats | 1 to 255 shades of grey 1 to 8 bits per pixel MSB or LSB first Raw bitmap for sending directly to printhead |
| Dithering (halftoning) | Error diffusion |
| Image pre-processing | Rotation (90, 180 or 270 degrees) Scaling (nearest neighbour or cubic spline) Image step & repeat in Grid, Brick or Wallpaper patterns |
| Max swathe size | In an XY system there is 1 swathe per pass. Max swateh size 250Mb. |
| Max image size | No limit (see comments on Max Swathe size) |
| Output | |
|---|---|
| Configuration | Head layout is configurable to allow automated splitting of image into swathes |
| Output | Head layout is configurable to allow automated splitting of image into swathes |
| System Requirements | |
|---|---|
| OS | Windows XP or Windows Vista |
| CPU | 2GHz Pentium 4 or better. If multi-core processors are available they will be fully utilised to increase performance. |
| Memory | 256Mb recommend, see comments on Max Swathe size |
| Throughput | Overlaps image processing, download of image in to the print heads and stage movements to give optimal performance and throughput. |
- Benefits
- Automates image preparation –saves hours of time
- Full image pipeline: colour correction, colour separation, and dithering
- Automatically creates the swathes based on printhead layout
- Key Features Full list