In computer to press/direct imaging systems , the printing plates can be produced in the printing press. Manual plate feeding and clamping is no longer necessary.
Short-run or moderate-run print jobs can also be handled without printing plates by transmitting the digitally defined print job directly to a computer to print system. For all computer to … systems a raster image processor (RIP) must be provided to convert the digital data supplied in the PostScript format (or in the PDF format) into a bitmap so that the data can be processed by the printing systems.