Gradient printing question

[yukon]

Hi, I've run into this occasionally and now I'm gonna try to solve it finally with the great minds of Signs101!

I design in Flexi Cloud and print via Versaworks. I have an object I've filled with a 2 color gradient (white to grey). The gradient looks nice and smooth in flexi, but when I output the print it has several horizontal "heavy spots" similar to a light band. I've tried rasterizing the gradient first but that doesn't solve it. Does anyone have any suggestions on assuring a smooth gradient print?

Thanks!

Yukon

 

[SightLine]

Try changing the color mode? If the white and grey are CMYK, try changing them to RGB, or if the grey is for example 40% K try changing that to a CMYK (or RGB) value. Sometimes gradients with transparency (percent of a spot color like 40% K) do not do as well as a defined color. Just throwing some things out there to try. I'm not really familiar with Versaworks so I'm not sure of things you might could try within that. Just out of curiosity - Flexi is a RIP (well FlexiSign Pro is anyways) - why design in one RIP then send that to another RIP? Could you not just print from Flexi directly to the Roland?

 

[yukon]

I used defined rgb colors in the gradients. I will try printing from Flexi instead of Versaworks. In the past (a few versions ago), Flexi would dump way too much ink. I think it's common to use Flexi and VersaWorks together, there's even a button in Flexi to "send to Versaworks". Also, I may try creating the gradient in Illustrator to see what happens...

Thanks for your ideas!

Yukon

 

[WYLDGFI]

Ive seen this happen in gradients that clients supply me as well. Sometimes has to do with a certain value of CMYK or RGB and how it translates at the rip. 2% might actually show up as 7%...giving me a dark band or a weird shade at a point of the gradient. Only way for me to pinpoint is to look at it photoshop in the channel view and see if I can soften it up somewhat. Maybe you can adjust the sliders in your application to soften or harden the gradient values.

 

[bob]

A gray to white gradient is can be problematic in Flexi. The best you can do in is use CMYK for the gradient, set the Rendering intent for gradients to 'No Color Correction', and select the highest order gradient handling, Super or Supremo or El Humungo or whatever the top one in the list is called.

If that doesn't square it away, the only thing left for you to do is convert it to an RGB bitmap, add a bit of noise to it, That's just a bit, and print it with a rendering intent of 'Perceptual'. While you have to do all three things, it's the noise that's the important part. Noise disturbs, ever so slightly, the points on the gradient where the color shifts so that the shift does not occur on a straight line. No straight line, no banding. The art is getting enough noise to do this while not enough to be seen with the naked eye. Usually less than 10%, often much less, but your mileage may vary.