color question

[dortonracing]

I have a mutoh 1614 valuejet 64" How do i get different colors, I have a CMYK chart, but thats not all the colors this can print is it?

 

[joeshaul]

Color charts are guides and things to show your customer to get a similar replica of a given color. You will soon experience what you see on screen isn't always what you get, and also different medias have different opacity so colors may look different if you switch vinyls. I've called something blue in my design software and had it come out purple. Called something red, and had it come out hot pink (luckily customer never got to see it).

You may wish to print off something like the Pantone color chart, think there was an old download here on these forums somewhere with the entire chart. Try searching for "Pantone Chart". Pantone is a spot color system, originally made for paint mixing and matching, it's used by graphics designers to try to be a universal color matching standard. It's really RIP dependent as far as how accurate a color you will be getting though, but the nice thing about a spot color is that when you use them, you should get fairly consistent output and if you ever have to send the artwork to someone else, you should get something fairly comparable to that color in return. Many sign companies will also have a Pantone swatch book on hand, these are fairly spendy but come in handy when color matching something at a job site.

If you cannot find the Pantone Chart, you may be able to print one if you are using CorelDraw. If you go to Tools, Visual Basic, then Play, click on the dropdown and choose All Standard Projects, then choose CreateColorSwatch, this will create a document with all the colors from a chosen color Palette.
Export it.
RIP it (this is actually what takes the spot color ID and attempts to match it to a preprogrammed color, if no spot color is called or known, then it uses either RGB or CMYK values to attempt to reproduce the color which causes the confusion oftentimes)
Then Print it.
If you don't have Corel, Illustrator or Flexi may have a similar feature, but I am not aware of it. Post what you are using and maybe someone else will help.

 

[P Wagner]

CMYK-based color charts will almost certainly produce a subset of all colors that your combination of printer, ink, RIP, media, and other variables (together referred to as your Unique Print Environment or UPE) are capable of. As the previous poster noted, use of spot colors can help if your RIP has the ability to identify and replace spot colors such as Pantone and Toyo.

You also might achieve a larger color gamut through the use of the following procedures:

1) Tag (embed) standard working spaces into your print files. Adobe 1998 is a good choice for RGB-based files, though sRGB can also produce good output. Use US Web SWOP v2 for CMYK files. Make sure that your RIP is set to respect and use these as well.

2. Design using RGB instead of CMYK. This generally produces a larger color gamut than building colors in CMYK. Let the RIP perform the conversion to CMYK, using all of the gamut available to your UPE.

3. RIP-based color settings are crucial to your color output. Output profiles, rendering intents, and working spaces are all vital to getting the most out of your equipment. As you are seeing, it is not simply a matter of hitting the print button to get the desired output. Good luck.

 

[dortonracing]

Hmmm Im confused lol.... So is it possible to print a candy red, Keep of the great info im deffintily going to look into this and figure out all the details your telling me thanks.

 

[DigitalBBQ]

Corel Draw, Flexi, or Illustrator can produce color charts from selected color palette you desired. Then you can output these charts with ICC profile when to export to EPS and then to your RIP software, and then to your printer. You can even import the EPS color chart into your Photoshop, and use the chart as your color palette to eye drop any color from the chart to use on your design. But like "Castek Resources" said in his post also you will need to assign color setting on your document properly to acheive the color consistancy. Each of the design software do have the color profile setting, and you must use the ICC profile from start to finish to export , and to print, etc. Flexi software do have extra function as it is also a RIP engine if you using the PRO version as it has the rendering and dither type of many different kind to achieve the print results when send to printer along with printing profile. There is profile when design, and there is another profile when export, and another profile when using RIP engine.

Create color chart in any of the design software, and embed the ICC profile on that design file, and do export to the RIP engine, and run some test prints and compare your result from each. If you assign your profile correctly, each file that you export the color chart from each software should uniformly understood by the RIP of a single RIP and Print profile onto your prefer media using RIP profile of that particular media.

Having your color setting correctly from your design and assign ICC profile on your document is only half way. You still need to carry on to the RIP engine, and to Media. Most media manufacturer do have generic printing profile post on their website pertaining to popular RIP engine such as Flexi, Photoprint, Onyx, Wasatch, Etc.

One company devote their time and money of software development such as Roland Versawork which work wonderfully with their printer, and all the profile are created for all of their media which they also selling their own media as well to secure the print results. Basically, this company selling Printer, selling Media, and selling Inks so you can't go wrong with your results. Just that your competitor who use lower cost and mastering their color profile technique will outbid you any day on any job!

 

[bob]

Hmmm Im confused lol.... So is it possible to print a candy red, Keep of the great info im deffintily going to look into this and figure out all the details your telling me thanks.

Not necessarily. While there are functionally almost infinite colors you can print, there is also an infinity of colors you cannot print. You printer operates inside of a specific color space or gamut. If the color you're trying to hit is outside of that space, you'll never get there.

Think of it like this: There's an infinity of real numbers between 1 and 10. Numbers like 3.14159265..., etc. But there's another infinity of real numbers outside of that range. Numbers like 32 and 187.469.

 

[dortonracing]

Here is another question, I have rolls of orcal 651 all different colors, just normal colors tho, like red,green,blue,mint,yellow,orange,ect. Is there a way to find out how to print the colors off them, or just put them up to the good old CMYK chart. Or can you find numbers for these things.

 

[astro8]

Here is another question, I have rolls of orcal 651 all different colors, just normal colors tho, like red,green,blue,mint,yellow,orange,ect. Is there a way to find out how to print the colors off them, or just put them up to the good old CMYK chart. Or can you find numbers for these things.

I'll chime in...

The best and easiest way is with a spectrophotometer (i1, Spectrolino). Measure the colour through your RIP if it supports it (there will be a support programme that comes with the measuring device for a longer way around) and then print out 'similiar colours' if it supports it and you want to fine tune it, pick the colour out and there you are.

A less exact way is to scan the vinyl and colour pick it. The ease of doing it this way will be in proportion to how well your system is calibrated.

Another but far longer process, usually, is mixing the colour on screen and matching with your eyeball.

Now to the printer...the more colour inks you have the better the match you will get, CMYKLcLmOG will match far more colours than CMYK....plain and simple. For example orange on a CMYK printer is a brownish orange.

 

[bob]

Here is another question, I have rolls of orcal 651 all different colors, just normal colors tho, like red,green,blue,mint,yellow,orange,ect. Is there a way to find out how to print the colors off them, or just put them up to the good old CMYK chart. Or can you find numbers for these things.

Here's what I did, coincidentally for 651 colors as well...

First I printed a complete Pantone chart. Then I matched the 651 color samples to the Pantone number I deemed to be the closest match. I constructed a swatch table of just those colors.

If you go this route, try to do the matching in daylight and/or under 6000k or higher fluorescent bulbs. Also, if confronted with two colors that would do, pick the darker color. Lastly, the more eyes on the process the better.

Know that what you'll end up with is only an approximation of most the vinyl colors, not perfect matches.

I did this not to be able to match the vinyl but to have a smaller pallet of usable and predictable colors. Running only off of the Pantone swatch table, there's way too many choices and it often becomes difficult to reproduce previous results. I regularly intermingle and use both the full Pantone table as well as the 651 table.

 

[DigitalBBQ]

Flexisign Pro version has built-in color palette for Oracal 651, as well as other series. You can create color palette chip chart from the 651 to whatever size group you need, and save as EPS with ICC profile embeded, then send to your RIP engine and using Rip profile for the media you want to print.

For example, Oracal 3651G is a gloss and medium grade permanent adhesive (gray glue) great for decal. You can use this media to print your 651 color to match your oracal vinyl.

For example, Red 651 is #031; you can pull out this color from flexi palette under vendor Oracal , and under series 651 and select #031 to your artboard, and send to your printer, or apply to your design, and then send to your printer.

Also at the COLOR SPEC dialog window on flexi, you can spec the color which already been program for you without using any spectrometer! [Why buy the cow when you only need the milk ! ] Under Color Spec dialog, you can pull down the menu to specify CYMK, LAB, RGB, HSV, etc to see what value. But you don't really need it since the RIP will understand the ICC from flexi and produce as close as it can.

One draw back from FlexiPRO, they have horrible profile for printing. You rather save your work as eps and send it to another RIP software to print it.

If you sending the 651 color palette from flexi to eps and import to corel draw, corel draw will convert to CYMK of the same value anyhow if you assign the CYMK profile to input your 651 color chip that has been profile correctly from Flexi.

As far as another software to creat the chip chart, contact oracal to see if they have palette plug-in for corel or illustrator so you can do the same without scaning and spec the color on your own!

Versawork rip from Roland can import pantone color chart, or vinyl vendor color as well.

----------------------------------------

For the Candy Red color:

Using Pantone color chart as your guide or reference:

you can look under Pantone Color Standard from pantone color chart, and perform the matching of the word Candy Red and match that with any of the pantone color chart that you think it is close match with candy red. Using selected close-match of the pantone color chart will help you standardize your Candy Red to target of a real pantone color. Then using pantone that you have matched to print that candy red, and called it quit.


Using your eyes and to wish for Candy Red:

When you talking of Candy Red color you only knew what candy red should look like, but you have no way to put the color in any format to reproduce it or to print it. You will have to start from some color palette and choose the one that everyone agree it is a Candy Red color. Some people say that Cardinal Red look a lot like Candy Red but without the gloss and the glow. So they may be real close in the same neighborhood but just need a method to sort them out and using one of the already made standardize color palette will give you the shortcut and without spending a lot of time in matching or buying equipment to measure it. Or using your photoshop color picker to do eyes ball picking of what you believe to be Candy Red.


Using Flatbed Scanner:

If you have sample of Candy Red that you like, you can scan that color into your photoshop, and use eye drop to pick the CYMK mix of that scanned color, and do a little tweek in the color spec to run test prints. Scanning images of color can produce pixels and when using eyes drop color pick tool you will need to zoom in to see the pixel space and colors since they may be shades of red and black in the mix.


To print the Candy Red, once you have conclude the way that you like the most that give you candy red you want; next is to print it. Now this is entirely different ball game since RIP engine, and profile will give you different density on different material but it should be only slightly different unless using the wrong printing profile entirely, then Candy Red will look incorrect.

This is also one of the reason Roland Versawork rip software offer the built-in chip chart printing tool, so anyone owning Roland machine can print your own color chart and it is uniquely belonging to the printer and its inks, and the print results will alway matched. Just need to show the client the Roland color chart and that's all. However, if client want Pantone Color of particular number; then you will have to master the printing profile to acheive the pantone color that your customer want and using Pantone chip chart and printing from your printer and hope that your printing profile will hold its reputation.

 

[astro8]

Flexisign Pro version has built-in color palette for Oracal 651, as well as other series. You can create color palette chip chart from the 651 to whatever size group you need, and save as EPS with ICC profile embeded, then send to your RIP engine and using Rip profile for the media you want to print.

For example, Oracal 3651G is a gloss and medium grade permanent adhesive (gray glue) great for decal. You can use this media to print your 651 color to match your oracal vinyl.

For example, Red 651 is #031; you can pull out this color from flexi palette under vendor Oracal , and under series 651 and select #031 to your artboard, and send to your printer, or apply to your design, and then send to your printer.

Also at the COLOR SPEC dialog window on flexi, you can spec the color which already been program for you without using any spectrometer! [Why buy the cow when you only need the milk ! ] Under Color Spec dialog, you can pull down the menu to specify CYMK, LAB, RGB, HSV, etc to see what value. But you don't really need it since the RIP will understand the ICC from flexi and produce as close as it can.

One draw back from FlexiPRO, they have horrible profile for printing. You rather save your work as eps and send it to another RIP software to print it.

If you sending the 651 color palette from flexi to eps and import to corel draw, corel draw will convert to CYMK of the same value anyhow if you assign the CYMK profile to input your 651 color chip that has been profile correctly from Flexi.

As far as another software to creat the chip chart, contact oracal to see if they have palette plug-in for corel or illustrator so you can do the same without scaning and spec the color on your own!

Versawork rip from Roland and import pantone color chart, or vinyl vendor color as well.

Good post and a good general way to go about it. All depends how precise you want to be. Maybe I'm anal, I spectro the PMS swatches out of their Guide to match my Pantones...same with vinyls.

 

[dortonracing]

thanks for the info.. Im using Flexisign Pro, So when i get the orcal 651 color and add to my table, will it print the color i want or real close to it? Or do i have to do anything to it, they come in a LAB, not as cmyk. So will it print right? Thank you very much for info above. Great topic

 

[astro8]

thanks for the info.. Im using Flexisign Pro, So when i get the orcal 651 color and add to my table, will it print the color i want or real close to it? Or do i have to do anything to it, they come in a LAB, not as cmyk. So will it print right? Thank you very much for info above. Great topic

Some might and some might not, depending on a number of factors. Only way to find out is to give it a go and see what you get. Try different rendering intents...Rip and Print/Advanced/Color Settings/Rendering Intent

 

[Stealth Ryder]

Just a question but what media are you using? And more importantly, what profile and rendering intents are you using?

 

[dortonracing]

whats the rendering?

 

[Stealth Ryder]

Go to a Color class, it would benefit you more than you realize... Some colors can not be achieved but you can get real close to any color...

 

[bob]

Go to a Color class, it would benefit you more than you realize... Some colors can not be achieved but you can get real close to any color...

Really? Get close to a day-glo orange.

You can get close to some colors. With others you can't even get in the same time zone.

 

[dortonracing]

I plan on taking a class here this month

 

[randya]

ftp://ftp.mutoh.com/Utilities/Pantone/