Need Help How many profiles do you really need?

[ColorCrest]

They basically said if we're not using their profiles (we do) they won't help with any issues.

This is because they know (presumably) their profiles were created while their machine was in a state of optimal calibration. Tantamount to handing out sheet music for a piano which is in tune. If the instrument is not in tune, well make it so, first.

 

[jfiscus]

In Onyx we created a custom color profile for each machine and only use this one profile for our regular CMYK printing.
For the specialty colors we keep a separate profile obviously, but we rarely use that.
However, we do have a couple "color bump" settings we use here occasionally and keep printed Pantone color charts for each setting. (15% 25% 35%)
Some colors you just can't hit the "richness" with the "normal" settings.
We use Onyx and Epson printers here and 95% of our materials are 3M gloss vinyls.
We also print on Phototex, perf, generic vinyls, reflective, etc all with the same "standard" profile.
We cut off the little tag from the prints and stick it to the job work order so that if we have to print a repair panel or another matching vehicle it will tell us which printer/profile/etc we used for them when we pull up the scan.

 

[Pauly]

Ah see I didn't know this either - I thought canned was something like "generic II" on versaworks, while we often use the matching profile from Avery or 3M's website instead. We did have a problem, for instance, with an 3MIJ180 roll quite a while back, and the first thing they asked was "are you using the profile from our website?????" (turns out it was a bad roll anyway ). They basically said if we're not using their profiles (we do) they won't help with any issues.

Soo safe to say the majority of people here are profiling their media independently? Does it take a lot of vinyl/time to do it? This is not something I know much about, clearly.

Canned profiles are any downloaded icc profile. (not created at your facility on your equipment)

to be clear, i dont have experience with versaworks or solvent machines.

What they are worried about is you not having the right parameters set for the media causing damage to the media. more to cover their bums. Basically user error.

Basically you have a media profile for your media. Inside that you have everything that your RIP needs to know to run your printer for that media.
You should have parameters to change such as: Overprint, feed calibration, vacuum power, dry time, head height and heater controls.
That's what they will be worried about. You could ideally use what the canned profile for the specific media uses if you know that works well.
What you can do though is create the rest of it, I.e the print quality DPI etc. then the ink settings such as single colour ink limits, total colour ink limits and ICC profile.
You could do the ICC profile on 1meter of vinyl if you wanted to. But if you're doing it for the first time, expect mistakes but with todays ICC profiling software, it can produce decent colour with average settings for ink limits etc.

Here's a PDF on how to do it in versaworks: https://www.pako.si/datoteke/katalogIzdelek/Izdelava-ICC-profilov-VersaWorks.pdf

You still need a spectrophotometer and icc profile software.
Most people will usually get the X-Rite i1pro (print) kit. it's probably the cheapest (not actually cheap) do it all kit out there and it's great. Profile your monitor, scanner and printer. and the software (i1proflier) is pretty good also. Have used the software previously and found it to be pretty consistent.

IMO every print shop NEEDS to have some type of colour management. That's the one to start with.

Unfortunately, It's very hard to find guides online how to properly calibrate your printer. There are some out there, but usually written by people who don't really know more than the basics, and for the people who know how to do it properly, they tend to keep quiet as it's a very expensive knowledge and not something anyone wants to give away.

Alternatively, you can pay someone to do it for you, at the same time they'll teach you how.

Safe to say people here profile their media independently? probably not. It can get expensive for small shops. Larger places will calibrate or pay someone to do it.

I found that when i had better profiles, i noticed more clients recommended us to others and had others coming from competitors due to us having better colour and quality.

if you have questions, Just PM me if need be,

 

[ColorCrest]

Some colors you just can't hit the "richness" with the "normal" settings.

A profile should always deliver the max color gamut available from the media / ink/ machine combination. If a smaller gamut is required to match another smaller gamut, that is handled via the workflow while still using the same profile. Much like a machine mfr stating they match 97% of Pantone colors, etc. That gamut is always available when called upon.

 

[Pewter0000]

Canned profiles are any downloaded icc profile. (not created at your facility on your equipment)

to be clear, i dont have experience with versaworks or solvent machines.

What they are worried about is you not having the right parameters set for the media causing damage to the media. more to cover their bums. Basically user error.

Basically you have a media profile for your media. Inside that you have everything that your RIP needs to know to run your printer for that media.
You should have parameters to change such as: Overprint, feed calibration, vacuum power, dry time, head height and heater controls.
That's what they will be worried about. You could ideally use what the canned profile for the specific media uses if you know that works well.
What you can do though is create the rest of it, I.e the print quality DPI etc. then the ink settings such as single colour ink limits, total colour ink limits and ICC profile.
You could do the ICC profile on 1meter of vinyl if you wanted to. But if you're doing it for the first time, expect mistakes but with todays ICC profiling software, it can produce decent colour with average settings for ink limits etc.

Here's a PDF on how to do it in versaworks: https://www.pako.si/datoteke/katalogIzdelek/Izdelava-ICC-profilov-VersaWorks.pdf

You still need a spectrophotometer and icc profile software.
Most people will usually get the X-Rite i1pro (print) kit. it's probably the cheapest (not actually cheap) do it all kit out there and it's great. Profile your monitor, scanner and printer. and the software (i1proflier) is pretty good also. Have used the software previously and found it to be pretty consistent.

IMO every print shop NEEDS to have some type of colour management. That's the one to start with.

Unfortunately, It's very hard to find guides online how to properly calibrate your printer. There are some out there, but usually written by people who don't really know more than the basics, and for the people who know how to do it properly, they tend to keep quiet as it's a very expensive knowledge and not something anyone wants to give away.

Alternatively, you can pay someone to do it for you, at the same time they'll teach you how.

Safe to say people here profile their media independently? probably not. It can get expensive for small shops. Larger places will calibrate or pay someone to do it.

I found that when i had better profiles, i noticed more clients recommended us to others and had others coming from competitors due to us having better colour and quality.

if you have questions, Just PM me if need be,

This is super helpful, thank you! I'm going to check this out. I'm pretty sure we've paid for the Roland guy to come in and do the colours on the machine, I've watched him do that. As for overprint, feed calibration, vacuum power, dry time, head height and heater controls, I do that on a per-job basis in Versa or on the machine, but it seems that it's not incredibly difficult to set them up per media

 

[Pauly]

This is super helpful, thank you! I'm going to check this out. I'm pretty sure we've paid for the Roland guy to come in and do the colours on the machine, I've watched him do that. As for overprint, feed calibration, vacuum power, dry time, head height and heater controls, I do that on a per-job basis in Versa or on the machine, but it seems that it's not incredibly difficult to set them up per media

again I have no exp with solvent printing, but i would assume there's no real need to tough over print, dry time and heater controls if it's set in the media profile? unless you use 1 media profile for different medias.

 

[Pewter0000]

again I have no exp with solvent printing, but i would assume there's no real need to tough over print, dry time and heater controls if it's set in the media profile? unless you use 1 media profile for different medias.

I think I need to learn to trust the computer more instead of tweaking everything all the time

 

[Bryce I]

Thanks everyone who shared! This has been an incredibly helpful thread. I've since downloaded a bunch of ICC profiles specific to the media we print on. They're great but there's a few things I still haven't figured out. I'll ask these questions in a new thread, but thought I'd drop them here too.

-When downloading a profile from roland website, sometimes there's two options, with the difference being amount of passes. What's the difference between, say, a 10 pass and a 12 pass, and how should that influence choosing a profile?

-On especially small prints with lots of detail or colored fine print text over another color, sometimes they don't come out. It looks muddy, like the fine detail lines get lost under the ink. The only way I've gotten acceptable prints is by abandoning the profile made for the media, using a profile called generic vinyl 2 (canned), at high quality (so slow!) and in some cases printing uni-directional. This high quality setting is 13 passes with head speed 592... 900 x 900 dpi (the max for this printer) The profile that I downloaded for the media, (that doesn't work) is 12 pass, head speed 900,... 900 x 600 dpi. What is it about the generic profile that's so superior to the media profile, when it comes to printing small fine detail?
Any insights are appreciated

 

[Joe House]

-When downloading a profile from roland website, sometimes there's two options, with the difference being amount of passes. What's the difference between, say, a 10 pass and a 12 pass, and how should that influence choosing a profile?

- In general, all other things being equal, a 12 pass print mode will provide better quality than a 10 pass print mode, though it may be difficult to see the difference in some cases between 10 and 12 pass. Also, a 12 pass will take longer to print a job than a 10 pass mode will. This is the trade off in printing - time vs. quality.

-On especially small prints with lots of detail or colored fine print text over another color, sometimes they don't come out. It looks muddy, like the fine detail lines get lost under the ink. The only way I've gotten acceptable prints is by abandoning the profile made for the media, using a profile called generic vinyl 2 (canned), at high quality (so slow!) and in some cases printing uni-directional. This high quality setting is 13 passes with head speed 592... 900 x 900 dpi (the max for this printer) The profile that I downloaded for the media, (that doesn't work) is 12 pass, head speed 900,... 900 x 600 dpi. What is it about the generic profile that's so superior to the media profile, when it comes to printing small fine detail?
Any insights are appreciated

- Roland knows it's printers, ink and software better than anyone else. They are very good at creating profiles. If you're getting a profile for a non-Roland media, it was likely created by the material vendor - or actually someone that they contracted to create the profile. As with most things and especially with profiling, the more you do it, the better results you will get. Also, this goes back to the trade off mentioned above - time vs. quality. Whoever created the profile that doesn't work tried to speed things up by increasing the head speed. The faster the head is traveling the more precise all calibrations need to be and the more difficult it is to get accurate drop placement. As you can see, not all profiles are created equal.