I took an inadvertent trip down memory lane last week. It was precipitated by a discussion I was having with one of Xitron’s dealers about trapping. It got me thinking about all the iterations prepress software companies have gone through in the past 30 plus years. In order to refresh my memory and confirm some of the things I thought I remembered, I pulled out several old copies of The Seybold Report and started reading.
Now that I voiced that, you, as a reader have instantly been segregated into one of two groups: Those who are thinking, “Man, you must be as old as I am,” or “Dude, what’s a Seybold Report?” For those in the latter group, The Seybold Report was the preeminent publication of evaluation, review, commentary, and general discussion of publishing technology for many years. As such, I was able to go back and trace the evolution of trapping technology as the industry moved from cold type (Yeah, I AM that old) to the precursors of today’s technology. Only the precursors because Seybold ceased publication, I think, around 2005. At least that’s the last copy I can find anywhere.
As it turns out, my research did a fair job of reinforcing what I had recalled; that trapping was all over the place. Since the early 2000’s nearly all trapping has been done in the RIP during the rendering phase of workflow production. It was always one of the first questions customers would ask in a demo. “Do you have in-RIP trapping.” If the answer wasn’t, “Yes,” things went downhill fast.
But as I mentioned, in the early days, that wasn’t the case. Depending on the workflow, you might have found trapping done before the RIP in a separate application, in the RIP as has become prevalent, or after the RIP. It might have been manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic depending on the workflow being used. One thing was constant across all the systems though: It took FOREVER. It was such a time-eater that Seybold eventually started running tests to clock the performance of each system, much as they did for RIPing and output.
So, why dust off all this old info and reflect on nearly 40 years of discussion, opinions, facts, and sometimes fiction? It all ties back to my conversation with the dealer. With both the Navigator and new K2 workflow packages from Xitron, trapping is no longer handled by the RIP. Instead, with PDF as the intermediate file format, trapping is now done quickly and efficiently in the PDF itself. This brings major benefits like faster processing, automation, and the option for manual adjustments when needed. It's a huge shift for anyone working with a modern RIP, and I’m excited to say, "Rest in peace" to the old limitations of in-RIP trapping.