Assign spot color to lc, lm

[D3D]

So you should be able to assign spot colors to CMYK so that you could jet a pure line of cyan for example, but how would you do that for lc or lm on a 6 color printer? And do you print it without a profile or how does that effect things? The desire is to print a hairline using 100% of each color exclusively for the purpose of manual alignment. Has anybody done this?

 

[balstestrat]

Disable all profiles and make them 100%CMYK+10%CM
I think this way you might get what you want.

 

[Pauly]

Like mentioned. Print with ICC profiles off. so in your CMYK image. 100% cyan will print 100% cyan only.

Only problem with Light inks is that it's tied in with the standard colour. So Lc and C is the same channel for example.
For this to work, youd need to create your own ink restrictions where instead of Lc and C printing, you'd set Lc to 100%

In this diagram you can see the light cyan and cyan crossing over.

Not sure what RIP & printer you're using so not sure if you can or cannot do this

That's how i'd do it

 

[D3D]

Ok great, this gives me some stuff to work with, appreciate it!

 

[Solventinkjet]

Can I ask why someone would do such a thing?

Look like he's trying to manually align his print heads. He's going to print a hairline of each color, I assume on top of each other, and adjust his heads from the results.

 

[AlsEU]

Maybe it is possible to print a line using only the light colour easier - looking at the picture above (a transition curve between light and full colour) you can find out, which percentage of the final colour contains only the light. Then set the strength of the printed line to that value and the profile should use only light ink. The picture above shows that this percentage is around 35%.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Also in most RIPs I've used there is a color replacement feature where you can just replace any color with 100%LC. Is that not available in your RIP?

 

[D3D]

Yes, preparing for the possibility I might need to manually align the print heads. I have Thrive 19 so I suspect color replacement is a feature but its new to me so I haven't seen it yet. If you have Onyx care to share a screen cap of what you are looking at when you see this Solventinkjet?

 

[Solventinkjet]

In onyx 18 at least, this isn't possible on lc and lm. The color replacement feature only gives CMYK options, now whether or not it pulls some lc beyond particular color values, I can't say.

Hmm interesting. I set up a printer one time and chose the 4 color setup when it should have been a 6 color setup. When I printed a cyan to white gradient, the cyan stopped printing about half way through. I always thought that meant that light cyan kicks in around 50% cyan. Anecdotal for sure but might be useful knowledge.

 

[AlsEU]

Hmm interesting. I set up a printer one time and chose the 4 color setup when it should have been a 6 color setup. When I printed a cyan to white gradient, the cyan stopped printing about half way through. I always thought that meant that light cyan kicks in around 50% cyan. Anecdotal for sure but might be useful knowledge.

The exact percentage where the full colour replaces the light version depends on the ICC profile, so it depends on the inks, printer, type of heads, RIP software and so on.