Color Management and the L25500

[dypinc]

I noticed so many references here to people using linearizations and profiles produced by others and many times not even for the media that you are using. In most of my testing of downloaded profiles or ones that come with the RIPs they leave a lot to be desired. Which confirms my conversations with a HP tech about the locations (altitude and environment) of these printer producing different results. He even attributed the pinch roller patterns that show up on some media to that.

Often looking at these linearization, ink limiting, and curve adjustments for the light inks I really wonder if those producing some of these setups even understand this printer. Seems like they are producing these from their familiarity with solvent printer. The biggest mistake I see is too high ink limits with light inks in the more than 80% density area. I have seen very few media that you can go beyond 200% total ink and this varies with the number of passes. Today I setup Sihl 3629. At 16pass I could get away with 190% but at 10pass only 170%. ColorGate RIP. I know these settings are different with different RIPs because the other RIP I can use here, the Fiery XF the setting would probably be between 150% and 120%.

I have seen so many bad profiles that I don't even bother downloading any anymore. In a 1/2 hour I can generally figure out the temp setting while linearizing, setting ink limits, and curve adjustments and then profile any new media I get in here.

Given the fact that a whole lot of time and media can be wasted in trying to tweak profiles that are not correct I am just wondering why so many people are not creating their own linearization and profiles. Most RIPs that I have seen or worked with at least allow you to do linearization, ink limiting, and curve adjustments for the light inks. One can purchase i1Profile package for a little over $1,000.00 if one does not want to purchase that option with a RIP.

So I guess what I am wondering is, after 20 years of printing color to one device or another almost every day, why aren't more people seemingly not doing their own color management?

 

[P Wagner]

So I guess what I am wondering is, after 20 years of printing color to one device or another almost every day, why aren't more people seemingly not doing their own color management?

It is a great question.
While I have my opinions on this, I would prefer to hear the thoughts of end-users of the equipment.

 

[Bly]

Set your light ink limits low. Like 15-20%.

 

[dypinc]

That all depends on what RIP you using. The ColorGate RIP allows me five different setting so I can keep the light inks high (40 to 42%) in the light areas but I can control the transitions so that no light ink prints from 80% on up or how ever I want to set it. The Fiery on the other hand does not have all these controls and is one of the reason I don't use it much.

 

[jasonx]

With the Sihl 3629 what heat settings are you using so the material lays flat after its been printed? I found I had to go pretty low like in the 80-90 degrees range so the heat wouldn't cause the media to deform.

Any feedback is appreciated before I go off learning to profile and build profiles I'm happy with.

 

[dypinc]

90 worked pretty good at the 16Pass setting. 95 at the 10Pass setting. 100 was to much at 10Pass.

 

[Dave Rowland]

dyp... this is why i posted the question recently about what did u get with the HP, was the spectro onboard useful or not.

There is maze of miss-understanding when it comes with CM, for instance i see the eye-one many times, but what isn't clear is what version will i need to use with a RIP? i seen them bundled in many ways and it can look like a minefield. Another thing, ColorMunki looks funky and promising but never seen any posts/info regarding using it with solvent/uv/latex printers, can it do it?

I mean, a lot of the CM features have improved, making it easier to understand, but there just isn't much information out there to un-tangle this maze and we could do with a "online profiles library" to become the defacto standard that anyone can post up and then "rate" the profile if it is actually any good. e.g. 8/10 Working great on my 3M blah

So, this is how i see it, one of the things that attracted me to the HP was the profiles library, but it is very limited. But if such a thing existed, would X-Rite and others be interested in getting it taken down as they wouldn't sell many devices?

 

[dypinc]

I don't recall seeing any rips that support the ColorMunki. At best if the RIP supported the onboard spectro you could do do linearization, ink limiting, and curve adjustments for the light inks on the RIP. And then use ColorMunki to create a profile, but again the question would be how well does the RIP support doing that.

It has been a while since I looked at Onyx (version 7 it was) and don't remember what support it had for third party profilers. When I tested Onyx it had the profiling module and that worked fine.

But really for the price of a i1Pro now days there isn't much reason not to have one.

As for an "online profiles library", they may be good enough in some situations, but there are how many RIPs out there that support the L25500 10 or 12?