Color management Don’t laugh

Cadlink DigitalFactory. Print and Cut Production
Those production shops that want to unify their output and manage it all from one easy to use wide format production hub.

Or,

Cadlink DigitalFactory. Print
Producers looking for multi-printer and multi-queue support.

 

What RIP do you currently run?

We use X-Rite i1Pro2 hardware and i1Profiler software and develop our own excellent profiles for Onyx.

 

Regularly, if calibrating all machines carefully, you will have maximum color accuracy for each machine, what should lead to near conformity of the output of all printers. But there is still potential for color deviation because of different color gamuts of the printers and inks.

There are RIP-Softwares available which do CMYK-Emulation, what means that the printers are not calibrated to use their maximum gamut, but to emulate a given CMYK-Gamut what can be reached with all devices. One RIP with that Option is for example SAi Pixelblaster.

But, of course this will require a lot of profiling work and discipline. If wanting to do that, I would suggest an automatic scan device like the Barbieri Spectro LFP for that job. But be sure to reach that goal, with software and a professional spectrophotometer, it will cost much more than a few hundred bucks.

 

If you are asking that question which is completely fine and you are rolling with those units it shouldn't be anything to drop a couple grand and have someone come out and profile your machines and teach you how to do your own profiling properly. I suggest contacting Mike at correctcolor.org. Having a professional give you the facts will pay for itself if not in the first month shortly there after. Getting the right color you need isn't just profiling.

 

I would get a demo version of Caldera either from Mike at correctcolor.org or get it from Caldera directly. At Caldera they will say its something like a 14 day demo but you can get this extended multiple times if need be to test the software. I would also have Flexi 12 cloud which is about $50 a month subscription downloaded and ready to go prior to having your color expert come out. You can do this with Onyx as well if you desire I just don't have a ton of experience with them as of late. We run all macs and even run Flexi 12 on macs via apples native bootcamp which is extremely stable if not more stable than the PC imo. I don't want to turn this into a which RIP is better thread because Caldera could have fixed things since we used them last and I could not be totally up to date here. I just want to explain our experience.
We were with Caldera for awhile but we dropped them. Primarily for their adaption to mac software updates issues combined with the nickel and diming us to death. Apple would make a new release, Caldera would tell us to hold on. Caldera would make a new patch to adapt to the new apple release and then something wouldn't be right with the new release. Caldera has a great system if it's what you need. We also got tired of the dongle too but just taking a quick glance on Caldera's site now it seems they may have removed the dongle requirement finally. With Flexi no dongle and you can download anywhere anytime and go. Flexi has it's limits also but not enough to make us switch back to Caldera and be under their thumb again. The problems we had most probably won't though. We have a print system and Flexi just fit better. Flexi also has a iphone app as well that you can check real time production stats and projected future sales based on machine activity. Search the app store for SAI Flexi, Caldera doesn't to my knowledge. If an employee says they printed something or cut something already you can jump on the phone app anywhere and see if they are telling the truth and when it was complete. Also Flexi allows up to 5 drivers the last time I checked. Go ask Caldera how much 5 drivers would cost.

I would buy the x-rite hand held setup and the x-rite chart scanner and learn them both. They both have their place. I hate making profiles with the hand held device but if it can't be scanned or I need to go measure a color on any object the handheld device is what you need. We plug it directly into Flexi 12 and don't need X-rites software they sell to get done what we want.

 

App example

 

Although Mimaki doesn't list all your printer models for this software, you should at least be aware...

https://mimaki.com/product/software/manage/mimaki-target-color-emulator/

 

We did a trial with Caldera and Adobe version of Onyx, Flexi did not have the monthly plan at the time or I think even the Adobe PDF RIP . Both were installed on a Intel Workstation using separate hard drives. The Onyx software at that time would lock up extremely often and tech support was no help. They came on the line quickly after the message saying a paid support contract would be required once we purchased the program, also we had to wait for a trial software to be sent with a Dongle. The Caldera was a quick download and installed from a DVD, it was different and we relied on tech to get us going during the free trial but they would log in via remote software so all was good. The Caldera worked for us without lockups so was an easy choice though of course I would now try Caldera and Flexi if needing to upgrade. Once we agreed to buy Caldera did send us a Dongle. I think we were actually about 2 months before receiving the Caldera Dongle.

One thing that saved us recently is we had a hard disk failure but had a clone of disk using free cloning software from Conezilla.org , with all ripped files deleted the clone takes up less than 16 Gigs and saved us from trying to figure out settings all over again. The drive installed to is actually a terabyte drive to allow for large files. We had at one time tried a program called RedoBackup for Cloning but it can't verify the backup like Clonezilla can and Redobackup failed us once so definitely suggest the Clonezilla.