Color profiles

[Tracyfowler6]

When the guy came to set up flexi he had this image and printed it. We asked for the color profiles and he sent the image and nothing else. I can not for the life of me get my printer to print these colors. Even when I saved that pink and made it a color when I hit soft print it was not that shade of pink! Can anyone help me get the pink, green and yellow color profiles?

 

[Pauly]

Are you printing with the same settings he did?
If you create a media profile, it's only for the same stock & print speed as the profile was created for.

 

[Tracyfowler6]

He didn’t give us the settings. I was able to get a color profile created for the pink but on the soft print it looks like the regular pink we printed last. I’m just looking for some guidance for printing these colors.

 

[Pauly]

what did this guy actually do?
Did he bring his spectrophotometer, read patched and create a profile for the stock you're using?

Because it sounds like there's some misunderstanding or miscommunication going on.

A profile / Media profile is for 1 stock and print mode. Example.
Avery MPI2000, 12 pass.
IF you use a different mode that wasn't calibrated, then it will not print the same.

Cant you go into flexi (i dont use flexi) and look at the printed jobs/history? see what settings was used when he printed it?

 

[netsol]

Kind of unclear what the tech did
As much as i hate downloaded profiles, (you should make your own) can you get one for the substrate you are printing on?
While it won't compensate for the quirks of your particular machine, it will get you closer than you are now

You don't say what printer you have or what you are printing on

WHEN YOU ARE READY, you can build your own profiles in flexi, with an I1 pro
(If you need i can loan you one for a week or so)

use someone's downloaded profile for now, when things are normal, watch one of the video's to see how you build a profile in flexi. If you want to give it a try, pm me, i can spare a spectro for a while

 

[edcooleyar]

That is the infamous alien girl image. It is often used to proof color setup. If you can print her face you can print about anything. The Granger Rainbow is even more difficult to print smoothly.

We recently had Mike Adams from Correct Color come and profile all our machines to match. We had 10 or 12 different media across 6 printers from different mfg which included sublimation, roll media and several rigid substrates. Learned more in three days than I did building profiles for 20 years. Mike is good at color.

Attached is the resulting test prints. If we had printed these before he started it would have looked pretty sad even though customers loved our colors.

Good luck.

 

[FrankW]

He didn’t give us the settings. I was able to get a color profile created for the pink but on the soft print it looks like the regular pink we printed last. I’m just looking for some guidance for printing these colors.

The setting will be set automatically when selecting the profile. With "profile created for the pink", what does that mean? Do you have a printer with an pink ink channel (some subli printers have pink flourescend ink)?

 

[netsol]

That is the infamous alien girl image. It is often used to proof color setup. If you can print her face you can print about anything. The Granger Rainbow is even more difficult to print smoothly.

We recently had Mike Adams from Correct Color come and profile all our machines to match. We had 10 or 12 different media across 6 printers from different mfg which included sublimation, roll media and several rigid substrates. Learned more in three days than I did building profiles for 20 years. Mike is good at color.

Attached is the resulting test prints. If we had printed these before he started it would have looked pretty sad even though customers loved our colors.

View attachment 158459

Good luck.

how did he accomplish it? did he create one universal profile that all the machines could hit?

i really intend to do that myself before the end of the year. but i am a bit afraid of reaching the point where none of the machines are printing as well as when i started.

i have quite a bit of experience color matching in other industries (broadcast color tv cameras, in the 1980's & photographic processors and silver based printers in the 1990's)

it occurs to me that sometimes you are better off if you do not have prior experience in other industries...

 

[edcooleyar]

I’ve done my own profiles for 15 years as well. Didn’t know what I didn’t know. He used a special profiling tool so the same engine created the profiles for everything.

One thing for sure, the rip built profiles where deficient in different ways on each of our 3 rips. Especially the greens and yellows.

Also did some magic on the ink curves that gave us dramatic improvements in print quality. Tonality in light areas and color gradients is much better than we were getting. Not quite as good as the lightjet and chemical process but pretty dang close. Our acrylic prints using thr light inks have substantially smoother tonality compared to our own profiles.

He has some videos on his youtube channel that go into more detail about what he does. I think he calls them the color movies or something. Search correctcolor.org in youtube.

 

[netsol]

That's why you have a choice of inksets with lc and lm or green and orange

Not at all to downplay what these guys do, but once they have suffered through creating a couple acceptable profiles the different series machines can hit, they are able to use them again and again. (Don't try this at home, you still have to get the printers to hit that profile)

 

[Pauly]

That's why you have a choice of inksets with lc and lm or green and orange

Not at all to downplay what these guys do, but once they have suffered through creating a couple acceptable profiles the different series machines can hit, they are able to use them again and again. (Don't try this at home, you still have to get the printers to hit that profile)

That's how canned profiles work.

You can get a canned profile, re-linearise them and they can be excellent. As canned profiles made by a reputable company are usually better than what most people can do with limited knowledge.

 

[ColorCrest]

The OP is misunderstanding color profiles and how to use them. The alien disco girl is known as “Nadia,” as in “not a Shirley.” The file is strictly a sales gimmick and serves no purpose as far as color management unless, I suppose, used as only a gimmick.

The file uploaded by the OP is tagged using the common sRGB color profile. The OP needs to be sure Flexi will honor the profile and set any design documents, such as Illustrator, to properly handle the sRGB color space. Color values may be sampled from the Nadia file and used successfully in other like files in a managed work flow.

 

[ColorCrest]

did he create one universal profile that all the machines could hit?

Be sure to understand the term "profile" in context. With regards to color management proper, a profile is most often considered to be an ICC color profile specifically. Unfortunately creating confusion, about the same era (1990s) as the term was propagated, "profile" was also used to mean both general and other specific settings for printing machines, especially inkjet printers, and may not have included any ICC profile because they were not necessarily in common use at the time.

A "media profile" say, is something rather different and more broad (settings for ink load, calibration, resolution, etc.) than an ICC color profile specifically. The ICC is only a component of a more general printing setup and is specific to a particular printer / ink / media setup.

So, a "universal profile that machines could hit" is not really a thing. Although ICC color profiles may be transferred and used among different printers, the smaller color gamut printers would be a significant limiting factor but is common, none the less. An example is aqueous inkjet printers capable of very wide color gamut used as proofing devices for rather limited color gamut of CMYK-only offset printing presses.

It's sometimes a conundrum, a shop doesn't normally want to limit wide color gamut machines to their lowest color gamut machines just so they all truly match.

 

[ColorCrest]

i have quite a bit of experience color matching in other industries (broadcast color tv cameras, in the 1980's & photographic processors and silver based printers in the 1990's)

The same tools from your past are still used today.

 

[ColorCrest]

The OP might be well served by making their own "Shirley" similar to their avatar which is representative of a natural skin tone (unlike Nadia), and incorporating bright accessories in the same capture. Then simply print the photo file. The OP would have real-world objects on hand to compare colors against.