Already have a RIP or are your customers' print jobs already in an image format? ScreenPro Direct gives you everything you need to take continuous tone rasters (images) from any RIP and then screen and stream them at maximum physical print speed directly to the head driver electronics. ScreenPro Direct includes our award-winning PrintFlat™ technology to help take your device's quality to the next level.
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Features and benefits
- Multi-core and multiple PC, ultra-high-speed, massively parallelized halftone screening solution
- Stream output direct to your head driver electronics and start printing as soon as you have input images
- Not based on a RIP, but developed specifically to screen images
- Works with any RIP, and perfect if your print jobs are already image formats (eg Tiff)
- Can work with any head driver electronics
- Includes PrintFlat and custom screen design service, raising inkjet quality to the next level
- Meteor Ready
- Retain your integration with head driver electronics if you move to Harlequin Direct
- Includes brandable Job Cost Estimator
- Accelerate to market with our free BreakThrough service (cost 100% recoverable against licenses)
- Fast product updates with bulletproof reliability
- Cross-platform, supporting Windows and Linux (Ubuntu and CentOS)
- Optimized for Intel i9, Xeon and AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs
- Specialized plugins for specific printer features (e.g. bar-splitting, inspection system)
Ray Dickinson, Vice President for Mark Andy“ScreenPro Direct is a key development to provide streaming full color VDP options to meet the print speed requirements of today’s “next-generation” UV Inkjet production presses.”
Multi-core and multiple PC
ScreenPro Direct can be configured in many ways: You can run all colors on a single PC, one color per PC, or group colors across on any arrangement of PCs. The ScreenPro Direct pipeline is also very configurable, allowing you to tune how many threads each plugin in the pipeline is allowed. ScreenPro Direct is also cross-platform with Windows 10 IOT and Linux (Ubuntu and CentOS currently supported). Configuring the number of threads allocated to ScreenPro Direct can also allow multiple programs to run on the same PC simultaneously (e.g. drivers for electronics or third Party RIPs).
Ultra-high-speed halftone screening solution
A key part of the software required to drive a digital printer is the halftone screening module. This takes continuous tone (contone) images (eg 24 bit RGB with 255 shades of red, green and blue) and converts them to images that can be outputted with drops of ink. For each ink color (e.g. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black), the printer can only output a single shade. The drop of ink is either fully there or it's not (binary). There are classes of printers that can vary the size of the drop (eg 1 - 8 drop sizes). All the shades you see printed are created by special patterns of ink drops and these are combined with media in the human vision system to create shades. ScreenPro Direct does this magic conversion at the ultra-high speeds required for direct driving of print electronics. It also uses the screening patterns and the technologies behind PrintFlat to give you exceptional quality.
Begin printing as soon as you have finished RIPping
Start printing as soon as you have continuous tone images from your RIP of choice. Configure your RIP to output continuous tone pre-separated images to disk. Once you have created all the images you need for a print run you can complete the screening and streaming on the fly whilst the printer is running. The speed at which the rasters can be screened is predictable and deterministic. It doesn't matter what content the image files contain, ScreenPro will process them all at the same speed.
Integration with any RIP and electronics
Whilst we can drive Meteor Inkjet electronics out-of-the-box, ScreenPro Direct has been designed to drive any electronics. We have already built plugins for a number of other industry standard electronics. Our Technical Services team can link to new hardware very quickly and it typically requires a 20-Day BreakThrough service. Our BreakThrough projects are recoverable against licenses as soon as you start shipping and are therefore effectively free.
PrintFlat™ and custom screen design service
 Before PrintFlat is applied. |
 After PrintFlat is applied. |
PrintFlat is our award-winning technology that corrects digital inkjet quality issues like head-to-head density variations and inkjet head smile. These attributes result in banding on the printed output which is very difficult to correct for in hardware (eg by tuning voltages). The PrintFlat technology is applied at runtime and can enhance the quality of the output without slowing down your device.
We also have a PrintFlat screen design service, which can be used to create custom screens to deal with other quality issues like mottling, chaining, noise in highlights, etc.
Meteor Ready
With the SmartDFE Workflow™ and Direct™ products you are instantly ‘Meteor Ready’ and can choose to use Meteor printhead drive electronics without changing your software. Meteor supports all major industrial inkjet printheads and offers rapid support for new printheads, so you have ultimate flexibility in your printhead choice: for example, you can begin your press development having chosen one printhead model and then switch to another with minimal impact to your development schedule. Or you can mix printheads from multiple vendors and models in a single press. You can even mix your own OEM printhead driving electronics with Meteor electronics to achieve the exact set of press characteristics you require. With this flexibility comes a comprehensive set of tools and services to deliver an exceptional product to market.
Reuse your integration with electronics if you move to Harlequin Direct
Adding ScreenPro Direct into a solution is an ideal stepping stone to Harlequin Direct. Once you have connected your printer electronics to ScreenPro Direct, it will work with Harlequin Direct.
Accelerate to market with our free BreakThrough service
Getting a new printer to market is a huge engineering challenge, and you can always do with more help. Our business model is that we sell licenses of ScreenPro Direct with each printer you sell. We share in your success, but that can only start happening when you get the printer finished and in the market. We therefore want you to get to market as quickly as possible. With our BreakThrough service you can add our engineers and scientists to your engineering team to get you shipping sooner. They can help break through any barrier slowing your route to market. You buy a block of days which is 100% recoverable against licenses as soon as you ship, making the service effectively free.
Will your customers' print jobs arrive from many PDF sources and creators? Do you need to support non-PDF formats? Not all PDFs are created the same. Streamline Direct will check each PDF, allowing your customer to reject any that are likely to slow your device down. Streamline Direct can also be used to streamline any problem PDF to achieve the same output quality whilst maximizing your device speed. If your market requires non-PDF formats, Streamline Direct can be used to convert many formats to print-ready PDFs.
Award-winning Harlequin Direct gives you everything you need to take print-ready PDFs and then RIP, screen and stream them at maximum physical print speed directly to the printhead drive electronics. Harlequin Direct includes our award-winning PrintFlat technology to help take your device's quality to the next level.
Already have a RIP or are your customers' print jobs already in an image format? ScreenPro Direct gives you everything you need to take continuous tone rasters (images) from any RIP and then screen and stream them at maximum physical print speed directly to the head driver electronics. ScreenPro Direct includes our award-winning PrintFlat technology to help take your device's quality to the next level.
Read more
Datasheet
Brochure
Case study
White paper
Working with you
Here at Global Graphics Software we understand how difficult it can be to get started on your digital print journey, and so our Technical Services team is ready to offer free expert advice and help.
Dedicated experts in RIP and screening technology, principal software engineers and color scientists, all with decades of real-world experience, are ready to guide you through the process of selecting the right software components and then successfully implementing them into your press.
We pride ourselves on offering a personal, friendly service and work with you to ensure the fastest time to market.