Need Help Colorprofiling on Rasterlink 6+ with a JFX 200-2513

[lephot]

Hi everybody !

Last week we just got our new JFX 200-2513.
Until now we are very happy with it apart with the color rendering.
Generic profiles are not accurate enough for our use which is mainly photo printing.

So I asked our distributor to find a solution to be able create our own profile with Rasterlink.
Well I was surprised by his reply saying that he had no solution.
So I started to search on Internet what solution were existing and surprisingly I couldn't find a lot of things.
The only thing I found was MPM3 ( Mimaki Profiling Master 3 ) and when I asked my distributor about it, he told me that nobody was using it in Europe and that there was no way to get it nore to be trained on it !

All this is very disappointing as it would mean I have to switch on another RIP what I would like to avoid.

So question ?
Are you ( Rasterlink users ) making your own profiles ?
If yes how ?
Does anybody have suggestions on how to get accurate colors without specific color profiling ?
Has anybody come across ( MPM3 ) and know how it is working ?

Thanks you very much for reading and hopefully helping !

 

[netsol]

buy a xrite i1 pro (whatever the latest model is)
using rasterlink, you will need to purchase the software with CMYK license, i guess
OR
change to using flexisign
the xrites are native supported and the ability to build your own profiles is included
purchase the flexisign software or subscribe to the cloud version (which is what we do )

a good friend's shop is all mimaki, but i can't give you opinion about the comparison of the 2 softwares

 

[SGC]

You can try different rip softwares, like flexi or Onyx, where you will have access to color profiling without having to buy an additional software license.

Flatbeds are generally used for basic sign making, so canned profiles are more than likely built to replicate solid colors the best they can vs tones and shades.

 

[Pauly]

You can try different rip softwares, like flexi or Onyx, where you will have access to color profiling without having to buy an additional software license.

Flatbeds are generally used for basic sign making, so canned profiles are more than likely built to replicate solid colors the best they can vs tones and shades.

Uh when making a profile, you cannot prioritise colour tones vs solids. If the tones are crap, that means the solids in that area are also crap. Which means the profile in general is crap.
Replicating spot colours is a Pantone & (other colour name brand) formula bult into the RIP.

 

[SGC]

Uh when making a profile, you cannot prioritise colour tones vs solids. If the tones are crap, that means the solids in that area are also crap. Which means the profile in general is crap.
Replicating spot colours is a Pantone & (other colour name brand) formula bult into the RIP.

You can absolutely have a profile that does everything sorts well enough. That’s the goal of the canned profile 101. If you want a profile, especially for a flatbed, to handle photographic reproductions the best, you are best off building profiles.

You misunderstood my response. I understand how profiles work.

 

[yannb]

Hi everybody !

Last week we just got our new JFX 200-2513.
Until now we are very happy with it apart with the color rendering.
Generic profiles are not accurate enough for our use which is mainly photo printing.

So I asked our distributor to find a solution to be able create our own profile with Rasterlink.
Well I was surprised by his reply saying that he had no solution.
So I started to search on Internet what solution were existing and surprisingly I couldn't find a lot of things.
The only thing I found was MPM3 ( Mimaki Profiling Master 3 ) and when I asked my distributor about it, he told me that nobody was using it in Europe and that there was no way to get it nore to be trained on it !

All this is very disappointing as it would mean I have to switch on another RIP what I would like to avoid.

So question ?
Are you ( Rasterlink users ) making your own profiles ?
If yes how ?
Does anybody have suggestions on how to get accurate colors without specific color profiling ?
Has anybody come across ( MPM3 ) and know how it is working ?

Thanks you very much for reading and hopefully helping !

Hello, MPM3 is the only way to create profiles if your rip is Rasterlink. Your dealer is not correct if he states nobody is using it in Europe, how would he know? Every self-respecting official Mimaki dealer should be able to train you if you want to buy it or have someone come over and make profiles on your printing substrates. I use MPM3 in combination with an i1Pro3+i1iO or Barbieri Spectro LFP table.
MPM3 is available to buy from Mimaki dealers: product code SPM-007, end user price € 2376.
Just to be curious: who is your dealer? Did you buy the machine based on a demo with your own images?

 

[Pauly]

You can absolutely have a profile that does everything sorts well enough. That’s the goal of the canned profile 101. If you want a profile, especially for a flatbed, to handle photographic reproductions the best, you are best off building profiles.

You misunderstood my response. I understand how profiles work.

Sorry but this is Incorrect.

Cannes profiles are normal profiles made on their machine. And depending on who did it (manufacturer, rip software, media supplier), how accurate it can be.

The reason why they're appear to be crap on other machines is due head voltage and overall head differencees in manufacturing and overall machine calibrations.

If you relinearise a canned profile, 90% of the time it'll be just as good, if not better than someone an average person can do with an i1pro.

This is why it's critical to relinearise profiles if you've replaced a head.

E.g I've gotten profiles for our Arizona from canon. They print crap. Reds are brown, poor solids...
As soon as I relinearise it, they where exelent.

 

[micadesign]

you can't do profiles in RL without de MPM3, but you can tweak a little the profile in RL..
which ink setup do you have? LUS 120? what profiles are you using?

 

[FrankW]

We as Mimaki dealers in germany resell MPM3, train customers and do profiling for customers too. Because MPM3 is a little bit expensive, it is not sold very often.

Unfortunately, because Rasterlink 6 has no own ability to do the calibration tasks like ink limits and linearisation (as most RIP´s allow even if they have no possibilities to create an ICC-Profile), a generic profile creation tool like i1 Profiler can´t be used. So MPM3 is mandatory.

 

[FrankW]

If you need one, we could deliver .

 

[White Haus]

Having used Rasterlink for a week, I would highly recommend considering switching to Onyx and getting an X-rite i1.

Rasterlink is an inferior product and I honestly can't believe anyone in any sort of production environment could possibly run a business around it.

 

[FrankW]

Having used Rasterlink for a week, I would highly recommend considering switching to Onyx and getting an X-rite i1.

Rasterlink is an inferior product and I honestly can't believe anyone in any sort of production environment could possibly run a business around it.

A lot of people do. Sometimes when I´m with customers, I would have some ideas with third party software for them too, but most use Rasterlink.

 

[White Haus]

A lot of people do. Sometimes when I´m with customers, I would have some ideas with third party software for them too, but most use Rasterlink.

Interesting. I took one look at it and ran. After using Versaworks and Thrive for 10 years, Rasterlink just seemed very poorly designed, not to mention all the typos and poor translations.

 

[FrankW]

@ White Haus:

I´m not a fan of rasterlink because of it works really slow, I do not like the user interface, and Rasterlink 7 specially is buggy. But most specially industrial customers with the small flatbeds don´t need special functionality, they just want to send data over a few presets.

 

[FrankW]

@ White Haus:

One problem too is that a lot of sales persons know the printers, but have no idea about the advantages of third party software. They don´t even offer alternatives.

 

[guillermo]

Having used Rasterlink for a week, I would highly recommend considering switching to Onyx and getting an X-rite i1.

Rasterlink is an inferior product and I honestly can't believe anyone in any sort of production environment could possibly run a business around it.

I have used rasterlink since we bought our flatbed, no problems, we tried Onyx and it did not work, it prints too, too slow and when printing with white ink, first prints the color and a second pass for white or vice versa, prints the white and as second run, the color, rasterlink, does it in one pass, white and color at the same run.

 

[lephot]

Hi everybody,

Sorry for beeing back late.. I've been off the last days.
Thank you very much for all the replies. Il will try to reply to those I feel a feed back woud be usefull.

Before I would like to point out about the third party Rip some of you are talking about. I am perfectly aware about those third party RIP, as we run 4 other kind of printers in the company, and we have tested quite a few ones to finally end with using Colorgate which we found to be the most user friendly and speedy enough to drive and RIP jobs for our 4 printers.
So I guess you will now say why are you not using it also with the JFX. Well our JFX is connected only through USB port and the cable cannot be longer than 5m, and the place where it is installed is quite far away from where the 4 other printer are. So the Idea was to find a way of getting better results though RL 6+.
Ok I agree RL6 is far from beeing the most user Friendly software I've seen, but after a few day we can live with it. So buying a new RIP could be one option but probably the most expensive one. So I would like to avoid it. Another option would be to find a second hand RIP someone is not using anymore with a color management module.

buy a xrite i1 pro (whatever the latest model is)
using rasterlink, you will need to purchase the software with CMYK license, i guess
OR
change to using flexisign
the xrites are native supported and the ability to build your own profiles is included
purchase the flexisign software or subscribe to the cloud version (which is what we do )

a good friend's shop is all mimaki, but i can't give you opinion about the comparison of the 2 softwares

Net Sol, we have an I1 pro, and I1 profiler with all options, but as FrankW says RL6 cannot do any linearisation so you cannot profile anything with RL nore I1 profiler. Than's why I was lloking for other options.

Hello, MPM3 is the only way to create profiles if your rip is Rasterlink. Your dealer is not correct if he states nobody is using it in Europe, how would he know? Every self-respecting official Mimaki dealer should be able to train you if you want to buy it or have someone come over and make profiles on your printing substrates. I use MPM3 in combination with an i1Pro3+i1iO or Barbieri Spectro LFP table.
MPM3 is available to buy from Mimaki dealers: product code SPM-007, end user price € 2376.
Just to be curious: who is your dealer? Did you buy the machine based on a demo with your own images?

Yannb, I must admit I was also surprised by my distributor's reply. I am not gonna give his name as I want to keep good relation with him, but it is one of biggest in france ! Where are you located yannb ?

We as Mimaki dealers in germany resell MPM3, train customers and do profiling for customers too. Because MPM3 is a little bit expensive, it is not sold very often.

Unfortunately, because Rasterlink 6 has no own ability to do the calibration tasks like ink limits and linearisation (as most RIP´s allow even if they have no possibilities to create an ICC-Profile), a generic profile creation tool like i1 Profiler can´t be used. So MPM3 is mandatory.

FrankW, Thanks for you help, I would prefer to find a solution in France, but if not I will come back to as we can also make it in german ;o))
By the way, is there any demo licence just to see how it work and if it is a bit more userfriendly than RL6+. Ans what would be the pricing idea ex VAT ?
Thanks.

 

[FrankW]

FrankW, Thanks for you help, I would prefer to find a solution in France, but if not I will come back to as we can also make it in german ;o))
By the way, is there any demo licence just to see how it work and if it is a bit more userfriendly than RL6+. Ans what would be the pricing idea ex VAT ?
Thanks.

It will be around EUR 2.500 (not shure exactly). It have some nice features, for example a possibility to create profiles for emulating other printers (even non-Mimaki) on a Mimaki printer. And as far as I have understood (not tested until now) it can create generic CMYK- and RGB-Profiles for other RIP´s/Printer Drivers too.

With Rasterlink 7, there is a calibration tool available, but haven´t used it until now because I have MPM3, so I´m not shure too if it is possible to create a complete profile with it and i1 Profiler. Unfortunately, Rasterlink 7 supports the 2513EX only, not the 2513.

You can download the MPM3-Installer from the Mimaki Website, and can use it unactivated for some time. But it has limited functionality, for example you can´t setup new media names.

 

[Pauly]

Hi everybody,

Sorry for beeing back late.. I've been off the last days.
Thank you very much for all the replies. Il will try to reply to those I feel a feed back woud be usefull.

Before I would like to point out about the third party Rip some of you are talking about. I am perfectly aware about those third party RIP, as we run 4 other kind of printers in the company, and we have tested quite a few ones to finally end with using Colorgate which we found to be the most user friendly and speedy enough to drive and RIP jobs for our 4 printers.
So I guess you will now say why are you not using it also with the JFX. Well our JFX is connected only through USB port and the cable cannot be longer than 5m, and the place where it is installed is quite far away from where the 4 other printer are. So the Idea was to find a way of getting better results though RL 6+.
Ok I agree RL6 is far from beeing the most user Friendly software I've seen, but after a few day we can live with it. So buying a new RIP could be one option but probably the most expensive one. So I would like to avoid it. Another option would be to find a second hand RIP someone is not using anymore with a color management module.

Thought about using an ethernet cable to the pc or network? Then use colorgate. That would make so much more sense and probably solve your issues.

 

[FrankW]

By the way: where are you located? We are near the french border, 15-20 Minutes to Strasbourg.