HP Latex + Built in Color calibration

[ikarasu]

Printing neutral grays is not the Latex's strong suit. I'm not a color management expert. I hired an expensive one to custom build profiles for our Latex. They worked pretty well, until the printer kicked them out and put back some kind of generic profile. Color management expert shrugged his shoulders and says it's the printers fault. I've learned to deal with "good enough" by just creating new profiles on the printer. Since I don't know how to create profiles from scratch, what the Latex gives me is better than nothing. I just wish they would improve it.

Which latex do you have? I've heard during updates... It'll reset custom profiles back to OEM defaults for media downloaded via the media locator. Which is why I've heard it's best to clone a profile so you dont lose your ICC. And now I'm hearing it's best to start a profile from scratch.. so if you're using one with a built in spectrometer, I'd try making a brand new media. Might turn out better than why you have now.

 

[ColorCrest]

I'm using the media preset from HP...didn't color calibration and created an ICC from it. Which is apparently not the best way to do it.

Are you familiar with this process?

HP Latex 360 - Creating Media Profiles

 

[dypinc]

Yes, I know. When I say onyx, I just mean the profile it's using. I don't blame onyx. It works great on user created profiles. For all I know my profile is bugged/bad... I can't get into it to see how it's reading colors / what anything is set at. So it may not be hps fault.. I'm using the media preset from HP...didn't color calibration and created an ICC from it. Which is apparently not the best way to do it. I imagine it's how most people do it... But I'll try a new media preset next week.

I actually don't find their black grainy. We printed a wrap with 2/2/2/30 for a lightish grey and it came out great. We've never really had a problem with graininess on our latex. We just printed some pure 8 x16" black decals...160 of them. Rush order so we didn't have time.to screen print them. We used 60/40/40/100... And it was such a solid black our sales reps and the customer couldn't tell it wasn't screen printed. Certain light colors get a bit grainy if youre looking from 6 inches. But generally we find it good.

And I don't mean a Violet purple... It's a weird muddy mix between purple / pink it's like it's trying to be grey, but it has a magenta/purplish undertone to it.

If graininess is not a problem then use CMYK mode. Don't know if the HP internal profile GCR generation is any different in that mode. But, If you have Onyx use the HP onboard spectro to bring in your measurements then you can set a high GCR when generating the profile.

 

[spooledUP7]

Spot color mapping is my suggestion. You can bypass the ICC ink limits by creating your own spot color in the rip and then create a spot color in your design software identically named.

As for grays, I get perfect grays with my latex by using Corel color pallets. I use flexi, not corel, but I have found the shades of gray in the Corel RGB to be perfect grays. Pantone colors and CMYK defaults all print a little off in the gray department.