Color Profile and Color Correction Question

[omartinjordan]

I need some help or an explanation for color correction. The guy who designs sometimes saves file with his profile embedded and sometimes not. My question is what exactly is the color correction tab for? Also, I need some help with different material profiles. The colors really seem to change with the different media types. If I use the correct profile for oracal 3651 it doesn't look near as good as 3951g. Why does the correct media profile not look as good as the wrong one? Can someone shed some light on this?

 

[AUTO-FX]

i can tell you first hand that if your falcon JR is not in top operating condition you will struggle with this issue more than anything else. I would recommend replacing the maintenance station and dampers and then work from there.

i am finding that flexi's profiles are pretty good if everything is working properly.
these profiles control how much ink is put down on the media - each media accepts ink differently and produces finished colors differently. one example regarding media is just by observing the whiteness of the vinyl. this whiteness, aka white point, affects the outcome of your colors.

dont expect too much from this machine- you will have a really hard time getting real high quality out of it. i like to think that it's more of a "utility " printer - it does make a good banner printer.

dpi also comes into play. with the falcon JR you will only find profiles at 720 because this is the only reasonable output for this particular machine.

i really would start with making sure your printer is in the best condition it can be, because it is a finicky machine but works pretty well when all IS well.

 

[omartinjordan]

it seems to be in good working order but sometimes the profiles are just goofy. I printed some pictures on the oracal 3951g profile on 3651 material and they look great. If I print them on the actual profile for the media the colors are just not as good. I can't figure that out. Also, I still don't seem to have a good knowledge of exactly what the color correction tab is for either. I would really like to use the correct media profile since it seems like it would help with the amount of ink used.

 

[astro8]

These are observations from my experience:

If you don't have profile making equipment I suggest this.

Pick what you consider your best profile for vinyl and use that for all your vinyl, pick your best banner profile and use that for all your banner, etc, etc. You may have a couple more for translucent, poster paper etc.

Just because you use a profile designed for the media by some company doesn't neccessarily mean that it's any good. I have 3M and Avery profiles that are garbage. My best were made independently by a colour tech who knows his stuff and are fabulous...they came with our last RIP purchase... really great pantones and greys.

I've always made my own but can't improve on his versions so I use them.

I use about 4 or 5 profiles for everything....a gloss vinyl, a banner, a backlit, a poster paper and a photo gloss paper.

This method simplifies workflow and gives you more consistent colour expectation across the board.

To choose what you consider your best profiles, set your RIP to ignore tagged profiles, set it as SWOP for your CMYK input and either ADOBE 1998 or SRGB for RGB input.

For colour intention, use 'relative' for everything, 'designers' love to dump a random black vector on top of a bitmap...print out a test piece which are available around the net or in your RIP's folder or cd...look for neutral grays and good shadow detail, good black graduation, neither under or over saturated colour, no blown highlights.

I dump all tagged profiles, I find half the 'designers' that attach them don't even know what they're for.

Print out a PMS swatch book also available around the net or in your RIP' install folder or cd and choose the best profile from there...you get the idea.

This system will get you printing good predictable colour. Once you get more experienced you can experiment here and there but my money is on that you'll find your way back to this method.

 

[Big House Signs]

Thanks Astro!

 

[omartinjordan]

We are using flexi as our rip. Is there a better program to do this? How would adjust tagged profiles in flexi? Sorry for being so ignorant about this. Also, I haven't tried using relative much. We use perceptual for jpegs and bmp's and spot color and saturation for vectors. Not sure if this is the best either. Do you guys know of anyplace to get some custom profiles besides from the media maker?