Color Management

[Jim Hill]

I must admit that after reading about color management I think my head is about to split. The more I read the more confusing this whole issue seems to become.

My printer is an SP-300 which uses Color Rip which is made by Wasatch.

I have been using RGB colors for the vector images I create in CorelDraw X-5 and sending them to the printer.

When I create the exact same images using CMYK colors all of the color are much sharper and have a nice deep color to them and the look great.

The images I create using RGB colors look decent but not as sharp as the image created using CMYK colors.

When I use a red RGB color it always looks faded or wash out looking and not sharp.

I would like to hear from anyone who is also using an SP-300 on which colors they are using in their image and why?

My system defaults in ICC profiles is set to default if that makes a difference.

The material I print on is Oracal 3640-G

Thanks for your help. Jim

 

[Northern Design]

Please dont use 3640 to print and compare colors, its not a quality material its at the bottom of the material list. try using 3651 and design in CMYK, You will need to find an ICC profile that works best for each material you use. Lots of test prints , lots of notes.
Have you tried to get Versa Works from Roland, its free

 

[4R Graphics]

Jim,
Color mngmt can be a head splitting thing I would be more than happy to try and help you out you can PM me your contact Phone is probably best and i will give you a call and try to walk you through some of it.

I see you are in florida I am in Jacksonville Florida so if your not to far away I could come by and get you sorted out if you like.

I dont use or know about color rip or versaworks I use rasterlink and flexi on my mimakis.

I have an i1 pro and the software (according to wasatch) that is needed to make custom profiles.
If your interested we could perhaps schedule something.
i have built profiles for my equipment and would never use another default profile after doing so.
I am no profile professional just a guy that has the equipment that is in the same state as you and would be willing to try and help you get the best prints out of your printer.

At the very least PM me your contact info and I will call you as there is a lot to color mngmt and it would be best to talk on the phone.

Good Luck.

 

[Terremoto]

... and design in CMYK

No no no. CMYK is used when you require separations. When preparing artwork for output to a wide format digital printer design in RGB - that's the input your RIP was designed to expect.

Download the PDF available here:

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

Read it over until your head hurts some more. In the end you won't regret it.

Dan

 

[Jim Hill]

This is the part I love the best!!!

Each time I try and understand color management one of the Big Problems I run into is each person does it a different way and I must admit I am not sure who is right!!!!!!!!

Some have told me just design in RGB colors and others have said RGB colors are for the web and a monitor.

Others have told me CMYK colors are for printer and print media only.

It appears everyone seems to be doing this differently and I must admit trying to figure who is right is not easy.

I do know that when take the exact same image and print using RGB colors they appear faded and kind of washed out looking.

When I simply change all the colors in the same image to CMYK colors they print perfectly and the color look sharp.

Who is right?

Thanks Jim

 

[splizaat]

We design everything in CMYk and our printer almost ALWAYS outputs exactly what colors we expect to see.

In the meantime - I'd suggest researching how to convert your sp300 to an sp300v and getting a versaworks disk from roland - it's easy. Versaworks is much more powerful than colorrip.

 

[tomence]

When it comes to vector work i design in CMYK using the Roland Color Pallete. When i do raster work then of course you work in RGB if using Photoshop.

 

[kanini]

Your printer har four colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black that it uses to print images. Your monitor mixes red, green and blue to show you the images. The mix of RGB gives much more possibilities than the mix of cmyk, so chances are you've hit a bright rgb red that you can't find within the cmyk spectra. Your printer tries to print it with cmyk colors=dull result. When you choose a close cmyk color the printer can mix it with its colors and you get the expected result.

Or then I'm totally wrong... *lol*

 

[Terremoto]

Each time I try and understand color management one of the Big Problems I run into is each person does it a different way and I must admit I am not sure who is right!!!!!!!!

Print out that PDF from the link I provided earlier in this thread. Read it over - two, three, or more times if necessary. You'll soon find out that working in RGB is the proper way to provide artwork for output to your wide format digital printer.

CMYK is VERY device specific. Roland's yellow is different from Mimaki's and Mutoh's and every other producer of ink. Same goes for the other CMYK colours. Let your RIP handle the conversion from RGB to CMYK - that's what it was designed to do.

CMYK is NOT a standard. Manufacturer's are free to formulate their CMYK inks however they please.

Dan

 

[Patentagosse]

Please dont use 3640 to print and compare colors, its not a quality material its at the bottom of the material list. try using 3651 and design in CMYK, You will need to find an ICC profile that works best for each material you use. Lots of test prints , lots of notes.
Have you tried to get Versa Works from Roland, its free

1- VersaWork is far from being free

2- VersaWork doesn't work with 1st generation SP-300 (something with the board I've been told)

 

[Patentagosse]

We design everything in CMYk and our printer almost ALWAYS outputs exactly what colors we expect to see.

In the meantime - I'd suggest researching how to convert your sp300 to an sp300v and getting a versaworks disk from roland - it's easy. Versaworks is much more powerful than colorrip.

I deeply regret my ColoRip 2.2 ...
My colors were saturated, bold, vivid, poppy. Now with Versa****, it's decent... not as good as before on my SP-300 (now VS-540) 'Must be something in the settings (?) ink limit?

 

[mgcustomgraphics]

Jim,
i agree with the cmyk theory, that's what you should use for printing, rgb stands for red,blue,green, these are the colors a computer monitor uses to combine the colors and are ''mixed or activated with different light density and mixtures of one another, that being said your printer tries to replicate the colors with inks that are not the same color( cyan magenta yellow black vs red green blue) as the colors the image was first produce, that explains the difference in color, color intensity etc. That's how i understand it anyway, hope it helps

 

[Terremoto]

Jim,
i agree with the cmyk theory, that's what you should use for printing, rgb stands for red,blue,green, these are the colors a computer monitor uses to combine the colors and are ''mixed or activated with different light density and mixtures of one another, that being said your printer tries to replicate the colors with inks that are not the same color( cyan magenta yellow black vs red green blue) as the colors the image was first produce, that explains the difference in color, color intensity etc. That's how i understand it anyway, hope it helps

Fine to use CMYK for printing PROVIDING you're outputting to a "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2" compliant offset printer. A wide format digital printer is a completely different beast.

There's a RIP between your design program and your wide format digital printer. It's job is take your RGB input, convert that to LAB, and then using the information in your media profile setting the CMYK ink levels for your particular wide format digital printer.

Once you get your head around the following points you'll eventually come around to my way of thinking.

• sRGB is an ICC standard
• CMYK is NOT an ICC standard
• LAB is an ICC standard
• CMYK is VERY device dependent

That's why you design in RGB and let your RIP handle the input and set the proper CMYK ink levels for your particular machine. DON'T let the fact that your wide format uses a CMYK ink set fool you into thinking that you should be designing in CMYK.

Colour Management is a complicated subject but once you get your head around it there's no looking back. I felt pretty cocky when I figured it out and you should too when you figure it out.

Dan

 

[splizaat]

Fine to use CMYK for printing PROVIDING you're outputting to a "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2" compliant offset printer. A wide format digital printer is a completely different beast.

Weird. Oracal told me they profile their medias using CMYK files and "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2" so that's how we should design ours to get the best colors on their media, using their provided profiles. EDIT (TO CLARIFY!!!) They did say set the RGB setting to "Adobe RGB 1998"

I (also) have no idea...but what we normally do, does work.

My question is, if RGB has such a more broad spectrum of color and is able to hit more colors that CMYK can't, why would it make any sense to send the cmyk printer an rgb print file with a bunch of colors it can't even produce? For exmaple, Lime Green in RGB file -- send that baby to print and see what you get! (This is an honest question, because honestly, I don't know!)

On an off-topic side note, if anyone knows how to print a bright, bold lime green let me know the color makeup because I could really use it!

 

[mgcustomgraphics]

fine to use cmyk for printing providing you're outputting to a "u.s. Web coated (swop) v2" compliant offset printer. A wide format digital printer is a completely different beast.

There's a rip between your design program and your wide format digital printer. It's job is take your rgb input, convert that to lab, and then using the information in your media profile setting the cmyk ink levels for your particular wide format digital printer.

Once you get your head around the following points you'll eventually come around to my way of thinking.

• srgb is an icc standard
• cmyk is not an icc standard
• lab is an icc standard
• cmyk is very device dependent

that's why you design in rgb and let your rip handle the input and set the proper cmyk ink levels for your particular machine. Don't let the fact that your wide format uses a cmyk ink set fool you into thinking that you should be designing in cmyk.

Colour management is a complicated subject but once you get your head around it there's no looking back. I felt pretty cocky when i figured it out and you should too when you figure it out.

Dan

very interesting, thanks for educating us but i think its way more complicated than it seems, like i said that was how i understood it worked, too many different points of view, what you just explained is too technical for me, i think doing a bunch of test prints is the way figure out the settings, so far the way i have it looks pretty good, im kind od afraid too play to much with it, thanks for the info tho.

 

[Terremoto]

Weird. Oracal told me they profile their medias using CMYK files and "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2" so that's how we should design ours to get the best colors on their media, using their provided profiles.

That is weird! Any modern wide format digital printer is easily capable of producing many more colours than are available in the "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2" profile.

Dan

 

[splizaat]

So this brings us back to the question....WHAT is the CORRECT way to do it? and WHO SAID SO?

 

[Jim Hill]

Thanks to everyone who offered advice and help

Color management is very interesting and I will be doing some reading to try and learn more about it.

Doing a few simple tests with the exact same image but just changing the colors from RGB to CMYK and printing them with the Versacamm as really opened my eyes because the colors just look so much better using CMYK.

One other problem is that the images I create are used on a web site so they look better in RGB for that purpose but when I need to print them they look better in CMYK.

Since I have a few thousand images for the web site I really do not want to create them in each color and that is my next problem.

I am testing some of the image on the web site using CMYK to see what they look like and I will let you know.

Thanks Jim

 

[splizaat]

Jim - run batch scripts in photoshop to convert them to cmyk or rgb....you're welcome

 

[Terremoto]

So this brings us back to the question....WHAT is the CORRECT way to do it? and WHO SAID SO?

Here's a relatively easy read on the RGB vs CMYK debate. This guy has credentials!

http://www.hudsondisplayservices.co.uk/rgbvscmyk

Gennady Petrov is Corel's resident colour scientist/expert. He wrote the "Designer's Guide to Color Management" available at the following link:

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

There are a multitude of good reasons to work in the sRGB colour space and leaving the RGB to CMYK conversion as the last step before output. Check out the above links and learn why this is so.

When you're ready to really dive into the nitty gritty of colour management order up the book, "Real World Color Management":

http://www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor/

Trust me, what I've contributed to the RGB vs CMYK debate is not something I'm making up on the fly. It's based on some mind numbing research I've done on the subject.

Dan