Blues looking purple on HP L25500

[xCROUSEx]

Does anyone have a good CMYK value for a Royal Blue that doesn't look purplish when printed?

Does anyone else have this issue with royal and dark blues?

 

[P Wagner]

Does anyone have a good CMYK value for a Royal Blue that doesn't look purplish when printed?

Does anyone else have this issue with royal and dark blues?

This is a very common issue, and it will typically occur for one of two reasons:

1) The monitor is not calibrated (Profiled), and is shifting the purplish hue color into the blue range on the display. The printer is printing the color in the file. Solution to this is to calibrate the display with a calibration instrument system.

2) The color on screen is correct, and the RIP (output media profile) is shifting the colors. Solution to this is to either use a different canned output media profile (testing needed), or better yet, to build a custom media profile. This latter option requires a color measurement instrument (spectrophotometer).

 

[dypinc]

What RIP?

What profiling solution? With proper profiling and color management your colors should be very close to being accurate.

Royal Blue - what is that? Do you have a Pantone equivalent?

 

[GWSigns]

We constantly battle with this (using same machine) as everything we do internally needs to be "Goodwill Blue" and it is a battle to get away from the purple.

When starting a new print, I often hear sounds of exasperation coming from the shop area and the word "purple" uttered in less than complimentary intonations.

My designer says no computer code is going to help, he has found he has to make sure the coloring is less saturated and in the RIP software, lower the magenta and increase the cyan - BUT you have to be careful that does not tweak your other colors.

 

[omgsideburns]

Does the "purpleness" change from media to media?

Do you print using a color replacement table / pantone colors? How do the blues you print compare the an actual pantone chart?

Using Illustrator and most other graphics programs, the default blue swatches are WAY too purple. Illustrators "CMYK blue" is seriously 100/100/0/0, and it really needs to be more like 100/80/0/0 to be blue. Even trade printers warn against using default blue swatches from these programs and making sure your blues contain significantly more Cyan than Magenta.

Check your monitor calibrations if that 100/100/0/0 looks blue on your screen and not purple.. because it's purple.

 

[P Wagner]

We constantly battle with this (using same machine) as everything we do internally needs to be "Goodwill Blue" and it is a battle to get away from the purple.

When starting a new print, I often hear sounds of exasperation coming from the shop area and the word "purple" uttered in less than complimentary intonations.

My designer says no computer code is going to help, he has found he has to make sure the coloring is less saturated and in the RIP software, lower the magenta and increase the cyan - BUT you have to be careful that does not tweak your other colors.

The last thing that should be done is to change the color in the file in an effort to get the printer to produce the desired color. That approach (or using the dreaded CMYK slider controls in the RIP) is terribly inefficient at best.

Blue and Purple are different hues. They are close to each other in the color spectrum, but a properly implemented color management system should never cause a shift from one to the other when printing. Note that the key words in that sentence are 'properly implemented'.

 

[Bly]

Custom profiles. Relinearise regularly.

 

[Graphic Destruction]

We get it all the time. Some grays get red as well. It's the HP's achilles heel if you ask me. I've spent hours on the phone with their engineers too...they get the same print colors we do, and that color is purple. I've only been able to help it by tweaking the magenta and cyan as noted earlier. Efficient? No, but it does help. All blues around the Reflex range are damn near the same shade of purple when we print them. One other thing, I have had better luck with is when I can do something in photoshop and open the psd right in the rip, that seems to help a bit. Flexi really changes colors sometimes and makes the purple issue worse.

 

[dypinc]

Custom profiles. Relinearise regularly.

No matter how much you bang it into their heads some people just don't get it.

 

[P Wagner]

Out of curiosity, what software RIP are those of you who are experiencing this issue (reddish neutrals/ grays) using?

This is not a printer issue, and is something that all printers are prone to. It is a classic color management/ RIP issue.

 

[ProWraps]

ill almost bet 100% he is using flexi.

this is the sole reason we finally switched over to caldera.

flexi and the latex, do not work. blues are almost always purple.

 

[xCROUSEx]

I am using Onyx rip

Thanks for the help guys

 

[dypinc]

I am using Onyx rip

Thanks for the help guys

So after linearising and creating a custom profile how are you blues now?