How to get grey color

[kico-abaco]

I know how to get greys using Roland colors, but what when you get color .jpg for print?
Customer made design in other studio, got me .jpg for print, but I can't find out how to get nice clean grey colors, I get somekind of brown instead of grey.
Using Versaworks, tried all presets in Color management section of VW, tried embedding different color profiles to that .jpg, decreased magenta & yellow and increased black ink still nothing...
Looks like some kind of color profile issue. Any idea what else to try?
Attached file - left is how it should like, right is printed file :-(

 

[Dennis422]

Posalji nekom drugom da isprinta isti file. Ako dobije isti rezultat, onda nesto nije u redu sa JPG file, mada ne znam sta bi tu moglo lose da bude.
Probaj i da stavis taj fajl u Illustrator i da uradis Save As i napravis novi JPG ili PDF. To ce mozda da izbrise Custom profile iz JPG.

Zaboravio sam kako i da pisem otkako sam u Americi.

Pozdrav.

Translation:
"Try to send the file to someone else to print. If they get the same result, there must be something screwed up with the file.
Also, try placing it in illustrator and saving it out as a JPG or PDF again. That might overwrite the current setting if there are any that are left in JPG file. The JPG should be "you get what you see" kind of file."

 

[kanini]

Instead of increasing black, try to increase cyan instead. Gives you a cooler gray. Other than that you need to look into color management/profiling. Roland also have a guide for printing greys. The file is called "rvw_printinggrey.pdf" http://www.rolanddg.co.za/SupportPage/VersaWorks/Appliction-Software Guides/PDF/

But you shouldn't get that huge difference as in your attached file, that looks far off.

 

[xxtoni]

Are you sure that the file is in CMYK ? Could be in RBG. Most common color problem I have when someone else is making the design.

 

[kffernandez]

all your colors seems to be off. if your other prints look ok. then it points to the file being broken.

kelly

 

[Mosh]

Have the customer get you a tiff file...or convert it to a tiff file. Roland and greys do not mix well but it can be done.

 

[HDvinyl]

Are you sure your heads are firing correctly?? That print looks very grainy with banding.

 

[HulkSmash]

Has nothing to do with file types.
One of your print heads are not firing. My guess it's the Cyan/LightCyan maybe black.

Check your heads in a test print.

 

[kico-abaco]

Yap, few days ago I discovered that 20-25% nozzles on brand new cyan head (installed 2 months ago) are clogged, tech said because cyan ink is too old (almost year and half in system). I've changed the ink, damper, cap top, tried to clean head but nothing, so for now I compensate it with high quality printing mode.
All other prints look great, vectors and rasters, with almost invisible banding.
Also I manage to print greyscale with "Preserve primary colors" and/or Roland color swatches, but it drives me nuts when it gets to some kind of greyscale+full color picture combination as in this file. Colors are shifted and not realistic, banding is more noticeable... Nightmare.
For this file I got best result with that jpg exported as rgb tiff with embedded AdobeRGB1998 color profile, printed with Max Impact. Customer said it looks fine although greys still look little brownish to me, particularly lighter grey.
Ajajaj, it's so frustrating printing color + greyscale combination files, I never get best results.

P.S. DKgrafix, ne brini, pises kao zmaj!

 

[xxtoni]

Yap, few days ago I discovered that 20-25% nozzles on brand new cyan head (installed 2 months ago) are clogged, tech said because cyan ink is too old (almost year and half in system). I've changed the ink, damper, cap top, tried to clean head but nothing, so for now I compensate it with high quality printing mode.
All other prints look great, vectors and rasters, with almost invisible banding.
Also I manage to print greyscale with "Preserve primary colors" and/or Roland color swatches, but it drives me nuts when it gets to some kind of greyscale+full color picture combination as in this file. Colors are shifted and not realistic, banding is more noticeable... Nightmare.
For this file I got best result with that jpg exported as rgb tiff with embedded AdobeRGB1998 color profile, printed with Max Impact. Customer said it looks fine although greys still look little brownish to me, particularly lighter grey.
Ajajaj, it's so frustrating printing color + greyscale combination files, I never get best results.

P.S. DKgrafix, ne brini, pises kao zmaj!

Not related but you should talk to your technician about trying to unclog that print head. A few months back I installed a brand new head in my VS-640 and after a few days I lost a few nozzles and I wasn't gonna accept that. I called the technician, he came within an hour and we together worked on the head, using a syringe he carefully pushed cleaning solution through the head and after putting the head in again and pumping the ink, thankfully all of the nozzles were restored. I wouldn't recommend that you try doing this yourself as it requires a certain amount of feeling and experience, it's a thin line between pushing too hard and breaking the head and not pushing enough to clear the clog.

 

[SpeediGary]

RGB Cmyk

Are you sure that the file is in CMYK ? Could be in RBG. Most common color problem I have when someone else is making the design.

Be careful when converting an RGB Bitmap to CMYK before printing. Most of the time this will make the colors "hot", or over saturated. I don't have a problem printing Bitmap graphics from the RGB file when I import it, then export to an eps from Corel Draw X4. RGB/CMYK problems occur when working with vector files, not bitmaps in my experience. RGB will print all the colors "flat". i.e. black will print grey, etc. in vector files. In fact I had a design this morning that had a vector map that had hundreds of outlines that were used to create the streets and building edges accidently done in RGB colors that would have been next to impossible to convert every color into CMYK without missing something, so I just converted it to an RGB bitmap and it printed perfect.

As far as the "brown" grey you are getting, I would try saving it out as a PDF from your design software, or better yet open the jpeg directly into acrobat and then save it out as a PDF. That usually works for me. I'm using Versaworks for my RIP so if you are using a different RIP this may not work, but it wouldn't hurt to try. The only other thing would be to ask the client or designer if they can save the file directly to a PDF. I have many clients that are using Photoshop or Illustrator send them to me that way and I don't even import it into my design program, I just load the PDF into Versaworks and print it directly. Works great unless you need cutlines.

 

[xxtoni]

Be careful when converting an RGB Bitmap to CMYK before printing. Most of the time this will make the colors "hot", or over saturated. I don't have a problem printing Bitmap graphics from the RGB file when I import it, then export to an eps from Corel Draw X4. RGB/CMYK problems occur when working with vector files, not bitmaps in my experience. RGB will print all the colors "flat". i.e. black will print grey, etc. in vector files. In fact I had a design this morning that had a vector map that had hundreds of outlines that were used to create the streets and building edges accidently done in RGB colors that would have been next to impossible to convert every color into CMYK without missing something, so I just converted it to an RGB bitmap and it printed perfect.

I have no business editing someone else's artwork. If I send a design with a mistake to the printing press and I get 10.000 posters that don't have the correct color or the image is wrong or has rasters or whatever...it's nobody's fault but my own and I have to pay for those posters. That's what it means producing graphics for print. I'm a nice guy so I'll send the file back to the client and tell him to get it fixed. But if I send something to the offset printers most likely nobody is gonna warn me about it and I'm ****ed.

Not bitter or anything so don't get me wrong but I'm not a fan of all these web designers doing print work, if you want to do the work be prepared to pay the price. I can't tell you how many times I got calls from clients who told me something along the lines "my designer says that it's your fault that this stuff turned out this way" and it turns out that the designer has no clue what RGB of CMYK is and what resolutions are required for what kinds of print and...well I could go on but I'm going off topic.