Lightning Plugins

Lightning TIFF, Lightning PDF, and Lightning LEN are high-performance output plugins for the Harlequin RIP designed to replace standard TIFF and PDF output plugins and to create Esko-compatible LEN files.

High-performance compression

At the heart of the Lightning plugins, is a broad range of highly optimized, high-performance algorithms for implementing the standard compression methods required to create TIFF, PDF or LEN raster files. These, along with the multithreading capabilities, make Lightning plugins the output plugins of choice for the most discerning users and demanding applications.

Multithreading

Taking advantage of the latest multi-core CPUs, the Lightning TIFF/PDF/LEN plugins are multithreaded to provide the maximum performance on today’s hardware. This feature offers the highest performance possible for last-minute production of time-critical jobs.

Data formats

Lightning Plugins provide the option to generate the following files:

Lightning TIFF

Standard TIFF files
Tiled, single-file CMYK + Spot color TIFF files
Single-file frame-interleaved TIFF files

Lightning PDF

Standard PDF files
“ASCII (Hex)” encoded PDF files

Lightning LEN

Standard and Extended LEN files
Intel (Little Endian) byte order LEN files
Motorola (Big Endian) byte order LEN files

Compression formats

As well as the compression formats supported by the standard TIFF/PDF/LEN plugins, the following formats are also supported:

Lightning TIFF

CCITT Fax Group 3 1D/2D and Flate

Lightning PDF

CCITT Fax Group 4
CCITT Fax Group 3 1D & 2D
LZW and Packbits

Lightning LEN

Flate (ZIP) with a selectable compression level from 1 to 9

Conventional and (extended) template-based naming

Lightning TIFF/PDF/LEN provide numerous controls for conventional based naming and an extended set of template variables for template-based naming.

Advanced file and job scripting

In addition to post-processing particular files, Lightning TIFF/PDF/LEN also provide post-processing for each job. This feature combined with the ability to place all output from a job into its unique folder allows for sophisticated customisation by writing post-processing scripts to perform additional tasks.