31 Jan 2024

The Norwegian Opera & Ballet achieves striking success with Wasatch SoftRIP TX

The Norwegian Opera & Ballet has achieved great success by combining Wasatch's SoftRIP TX software with a d.gen Artrix GT Digital Textile printer.  Developed exclusively for textile printing and producing rich vibrant colours on fine fabrics, Wasatch SoftRIP TX has enabled The Norwegian Opera & Ballet to create extraordinary costumes and accessories for their productions. SoftRIP’s powerful colour tools and ease of use allow for complete control so the creative design is never compromised.

SoftRIP TX gives the Norwegian Opera & Ballet all the features they need to get their complex production running smoothly. The demand for premium colour is no problem with SoftRIP’s 16-bit rendering and PSS halftoning. The highest quality of colour is reproduced with the greatest level of intricacy. SoftRIP’s efficient workflow, easy setup, and real time status of each job with Queues Management allow the Norwegian Opera & Ballet to focus on what really matters - their performances.

The specialised tools in SoftRIP TX give the Norwegian Opera & Ballet flexibility to be creative without worrying about reaching beautiful life-like colours. Plus, with Wasatch's Efficient Repeats they can customise their design directly in SoftRIP with advanced drop and slide controls, saving time and reducing file size. This is possible with SoftRIP’s halftoning and re-sampling algorithms that ensures seamless repeats.

"Wasatch SoftRIP and the d.gen Artrix printer give us more possibilities. We now can customise our costumes to exactly how we envision them,” says Kari Alette Baekkevold, the Head of Print and Dyeshop. “We print on a wide variety of fabrics. For our last production we printed on silk, viscose velvet, and silk pongee. It made beautiful costumes!"

Since detail is important, Swarovski stones and gold elements are added to the costumes resulting in exquisite designs that leave a lasting impression.

SoftRIP’s easy-to-use color management tools make it effortless to achieve the desired colour. When an exact colour is needed, Kari Alette utilises the Color Atlas Generator by specifying a range of colour swatches and printing on the target fabric. She then uses the Spot Color Replacement tool to enter LAB values. The result is a perfect colour match.  Another feature Kari Alette finds useful is SoftRIP’s Correction Curves. Easy colour adjustments are made in the Color Transform window to make the colours really pop.

For more information on The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, please visit www.operaen.no/en.

[Photo caption: Wasatch SoftRIP and the d.gen Artrix GT printer create crisp designs with rich blacks. The company only picked fabric that could withstand many performances and washings.]