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Absolutely 100% Green Newbie to Printing Help Appreciated

B

Britton

New Member
I have been in these forums searching for an answer to my particular problem I've so far managed to come to the conclusion that I am most likely royally hooped. So please, anyone not bothered by someone who is utterly ignorant please please help me.

I recently took over the design position at a sign shop with zero experience in printing, and little more in designing. There is no one to train me or even answer simple questions so I'm very literally flying by the seat of my pants all day every day.

Did I mention that my printer is trying to kill me?
I know nothing of color matching, ICC profiles, and the like, I'll be honest I couldn't even tell you what the heck ICC stands for. All this talk of profiling, printing swatches vs. some other techy way that's supposedly way better is making my ignorant little head spin. Newbie. I can't stress that enough.

So far, through much hair pulling (and I like my hair so this has been a little frustrating) I've managed to pull off most of our jobs but I am getting tired of all this farting around just to print a crappy decal for a body shop.

Someone, in as simple terms as possible, TELL ME HOW TO PRINT A BLUE TO GRAY GRADIENT. My Roland SolJet Pro II has been printing this stupid decal as blue to PINK gradient. Its been created in photoshop in grayscale originally, but because the customer wants to have a blue one as well I had to switch to RGB, which I did because the last designer told me that's what ALWAYS to do. RGB. Everytime. So I did. Every other job it's fine. I desaturated all layers except the blue. I'm so new I don't even know if I've saved the file correctly????? Good lord. Anyway, everytime I think I've figured out this grayscale issue something else happens and I'm forced to go back to square one.
I'm a girl and this is making me cry occasionally. If that will make anyone feel slightly more inclined to help me. All my Roland rep ever tells me is to play around with the color settings in Versa works, which is stupid because that affects the entire image, and all the colors, not just the one i want to focus on, which is the dang gray. All the time the gray... Sigh. I hope I've given enough info on the actual issue and not so much on the whining, though if I'm honest I'm enjoying the little vent I'm doing.
 
kylebrk

kylebrk

New Member
The old designer is stupid. You print CMYK. Design in CMYK.

Also, what file types are you printing from.

As far the crying thing goes, take a deep breath. You're fine. Roland and the versaworks program are easy to figure out once you get used to it. You'll be fine. I promise.
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
eight38signco said:
The old designer is stupid. You print CMYK. Design in CMYK.

Also, what file types are you printing from.

As far the crying thing goes, take a deep breath. You're fine. Roland and the versaworks program are easy to figure out once you get used to it. You'll be fine. I promise.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. Sometimes we have to design in RGB, and print in RGB to get the color the customer wants. CMYK has a dull image compared to most RGB's.
 
ddarlak

ddarlak

Go Bills!
I'm a girl and this is making me cry occasionally. If that will make anyone feel slightly more inclined to help me.
Click to expand...

you'll fit in great here!!!

Not necessarily. Sometimes we have to design in RGB, and print in RGB to get the color the customer wants. CMYK has a dull image compared to most RGB's.
Click to expand...

i had to get a real printer to understand this, now i get it.

back to the topic..... can't help ya, but welcome....entertaining first post
 
GAC05

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
You are lucky
Absolutely 100% green is hard to hit with a cmyk printer...
Welcome to the forums.

wayne k
guam usa
 
idsignsil

idsignsil

New Member
Take some time and go to the Roland web site and watch some of the tutorials. They are very helpful, there is one on printing grey. I had trouble with gray in the beginning too.

Forget the ICC profiles for now. If you are using Versaworks as your rip, you can download profiles from manufactures websites for the materials you are printing on. Oracal & 3M both have great profiles. You can also print out Roland color charts onto various material from Versaworks.

My main suggestion is take some time and watch some tutorials. If you have some more specific questions after that I will try to help if I can.
 
Terremoto

Terremoto

New Member
eight38signco said:
The old designer is stupid. You print CMYK. Design in CMYK.

Also, what file types are you printing from.

As far the crying thing goes, take a deep breath. You're fine. Roland and the versaworks program are easy to figure out once you get used to it. You'll be fine. I promise.
Click to expand...

You're dead WRONG! The old designer was right even though he may not have understood why he was. CMYK is NOT any kind of a standard - Roland's yellow could be different than Mimaki's or HP's or whoever. In fact it more than likely is different.

On the other hand RGB is a standard and that's what your RIP expects. It's going to take your RGB file, convert it to LAB and then set the proper CMYK ink levels for your particular printer. (A tad oversimplified but basically that's how it works and that's how it was designed to work.)

Working in CMYK creates a "double conversion" - you don't want that! You won't end up with a hair left on your head if you head down that road.

First problem you're going to have with doing your artwork in CMYK is that your blacks are going to be dull and washed out. That's just for starters. The conversion from CMYK to LAB and back to CMYK will most certainly provide you with a multitude of unexpected results. Unexpected results that you can avoid by doing your artwork in RGB.

For best results - and to allow your artwork to be re-used (or for the trendoids - re-purposed) use sRGB as opposed to AdobeRGB (1998) for the simple reason that a web browser will choke on an AdobeRGB (1998) file.

Make sure your RIP is set up for sRGB files and not AdobeRGB (1998). A mismatch here will cause you grief and unexpected results. Remember..., the goal here is to achieve consistent and predictable results (hugely important with a deadline looming).

One more thing - make sure you tell your design software to embed the sRGB profile and DON'T tell your RIP to ignore the embedded profile.

A very good condensed version of "Colour Theory" can be found here (click on the PDF link):

http://coreldraw.com/wikis/howto/designer-s-guide-to-color-management.aspx

The author wrote the guide with CorelDraw X5 in mind but the information is equally valid for any design software. I had to read it over a couple of times before I got a handle on it but the effort has paid for itself several times over.

The biggest hurdle is getting your head around working in sRGB when your printer is using a CMYK ink set. I know it sounds counter-intuitive - it certainly did to me at first.

Don't forget that there's a RIP in between the artwork you create and the wide format printer that provides the output. The RIP is designed to take a sRGB file (and it EXPECTS a sRGB file) and with a little chicken swinging Voodoo magic sets the CMYK ink levels for your particular printer.

Sure, you can listen to folks here and do your design work in CMYK and you may even get somewhat acceptable results but to really shine when outputting to a wide format digital printer work in sRGB!

On another note - I don't understand why so many people use photo editing software (PhotoShop) for doing serious sign design work. Never did understand the logic there and likely never will.

Dan

P.S. A big :Canada 2: welcome to the OP.
 
longlivemedia

longlivemedia

New Member
Why would he tell you to design in RGB all the time? By discounting CMYK, he shows that he probably doesn't understand half of what he's telling you.
 
Banners Signs Etc.

Banners Signs Etc.

New Member
I just did a test in illustrator.
We are using a roland printer with versaworks

Red green blue and black using sliders in RGB and then in CMYK

The RGB looked better on screen but the print looked better with cmyk
(reds were kind of orange, Green was puke) Blacks matched up

Then used the roland color library to assign the colors to what it determines is Red Green Blue and Black

BOTH screens and prints were the same....Both looked good...Long story short It seems like you can use whatever color space you want if you are using the roland color system

Which you should probably use if you're a noob to this...just use versaworks and print out a chart then use their color system
 
boxerbay

boxerbay

New Member
the color space you use depends on the client and what their expectations are. if you have a client doing flyers, business cards, a letterhead on offset press and they want a banner to match then you will be working in cmyk color space. if you have a client that just wants the brightest greens, blues, and oranges and is not worried about having to match those later to their traditional offset media then RGB is the best. we use both.
 
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