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RIP is software used to produce a raster image for printing, see about.com for more uses. The bitmap that is created is then sent to some output device normally a printer. The RIP software may be located on your computer in the form of a printer driver or standalone program or it may be built into your printer hardware. RIP acts like a translator between your software and your hardware. Most RIP’s support common document formats such as PostScript, Portable Document Format, and XPS.

There are three main stages of RIP, Interpretation, Rendering, and Screening. Interpretation is the process the RIP uses to translate your information into Page description languages, which is a private internal representation your page.

Rendering is the process RIP uses to convert the internal representation your page into a continuous tone bitmap.

Screening is the process RIP uses to convert the internal continuous tone bitmap image into halftone image which is nothing more than pattern of dots. There are two methods that can be used to perform this process. The first is called Amplitude Modulation screening, varying the dot size based on object density; each dot is placed in a fixed grid making it appear lighter or darker, the larger the dots in a grid the darker it will appear. The second method is called stochastic or Frequency Modulation Screening. In stochastic screening, dot size remains constant and dots are placed in random order based on some internal set of rules.

Most if not all Laser printer contains some RIP support. To see if a printer contains RIP just look to see if it supports such document formats such as PostScript, Portable Document Format, and XPS. Even if it does not support those common document formats it may still contain some lower RIP for converting larger or small bitmap. Today you do not have to have a big expensive laser printer to have RIP support. A lot of inkjet now support RIP as well.