ICC Nightmare

[MrSalumi]

Ok here is the deal. I bought a printer (Roland SJ540 SoljetII) about a year ago with little knowledge and a lot of ambition. It's been one of the steepest learning curves I have ever encountered but it feels good to learn and become familiar with this printer and this industry. I've done a LOT of research and as of yet haven't had to call in the techs to help with anything.

My latest issue is combing through the 100 profiles that came with the RIP (Wasatch) from the previous owner. I have a few go to profiles for everyday printing but I am getting into more specific printing and I need better profiles. I have tried and tried and tried altering profiles, test printing and getting absolutely nowhere.

I dont have a profiler (I know its like painting a house without a paintbrush). I don't really know what the he(( I am doing. Some tests are better than others but I can't make progress.

Are there any options for hiring someone to come linearize my printer and create some good profiles for me?

Thanks.
Sal

 

[bob]

You can burden yourself with all manner of exotic tackle and make all of the hard core coloristas adrift in these waters smile, Or you can simply pick one or two, no more is necessary and even two is overkill, profiles and print a PMS chart on each of the media you use. This is the easy way and it makes the color nazis go crazy. Not only do you end up with a workable system but you get to annoy a bunch of people who deserve to be annoyed.

On the profile you select make the following settings...

Rendering Intents: No Color Correction or, failing that, Saturation for everything except bitmaps. Set Bitmaps to Perceptual
Select the highest dither algorithm available.
Select the highest gradient handling algorithm available.

If you send bitmaps to be printed, send RGB JPG files made with no compression and no smoothing. Another two for one, this also annoys the purists.

Print your color charts and hang them on the wall. When you want a specific color, find one on the appropriate chart. If torn between two possibilities, select the darker of the two.

With these charts you know exactly what your printer is going to do, and that's all that matters. What appears on your monitor means absolutely nothing. What comes out of the printer is the truth.

 

[rubo]

+1 and get rid of clients who whine about this or that color "little bit darker/lighter" or whatnot...If/when you print long enough you'll learn what your printer does. Try that first - you can always spend $$ on profiles later. Good luck!

 

[MrSalumi]

Good advice guys. I appreciate the feedback.

Are there any good resources or books that give a basic lesson in this stuff or is the knowledge all transfered person to person on the job?

 

[Bly]

You can use a rock to bash in a nail, too.

It would make a lot of sense to have someone create a few profiles for you.

Open>preflight>print
is much more productive than
open>preflight>print test strip>check colours>tweak>reprint test>print.

Unless all your customers really can't tell the difference.

 

[MagnificentBastid]

One of our printers is a Roland SC540 Pro II EX that we've been using daily for just about 9 years now. It originally came with Wasatch ColorRip (i'm assuming that's what you're using), but we eventually upgraded to Onyx Rip so that we could run it with our other printers. We also had some profiles made, and like others have mentioned, its totally worth the investment.

I remember spending so much time back in the day doing test prints to get that perfect color match (Orange, Gray and Vibrant Red were the most difficult!); as well as trying to get prints out as fast as possible, without losing much quality or suffer from banding. With a better rip and profiles, my prints come out accurate, colorful and at a reasonable speed. Now I spend most of my time on getting actual work done. Profiling can be a little expensive, but the question you gotta ask yourself is how much is your time worth?

One other quick note; If you are using the old Wasatch ColorRip, then another reason I recommend upgrading your Rip is because the old ColorRip uses 8-bit color rendering. Newer rips, such as Wasatch SoftRip use 16-bit color rendering. Basically 16-bit allows for smoother gradients in both raster and vector graphics, as well as produces output that is more faithful to the source image. Have you ever noticed odd banding/striations in the gradients or shadows of your prints? This will help eliminate that.

Good luck to you!

 

[k_graham]

A little bit of both is probably a good idea - we have the Spectro hardware because of our copier side but also found some oranges a problem. Finally I Googled on line for Color charts, CMYK charts and found some from CMYKchart .com at 5% gradients as well they include RGB and Pantone you can print out the 2 and 3 color combinations provide the pure colors you are looking for and as you look up the edge of the charts you can see if your machine is even capable of the desired color, after all a icc profile and Pantone matching won't do the job if its outside of the Gamut of your inks - Remember the real Pantone swatches are made using many more base colors - but you can have your client pick a 5% combination and he has available more combinations than Pantone, of colors you can print. On the other hand I think photos will work best with profiles and your monitor can then be calibrated with the same Spectro if you get the equipment for it. Ken

 

[bob]

You can use a rock to bash in a nail, too.

It would make a lot of sense to have someone create a few profiles for you.

Open>preflight>print
is much more productive than
open>preflight>print test strip>check colours>tweak>reprint test>print.

Unless all your customers really can't tell the difference.

Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not understand?

If you do as previously suggested you will always know exactly what's going to come out of your printer. There's never any need to check and/or tweak anything.

Moreover, sending high quality RGB JPG files to your RIP and using a Rendering Intent of 'Perceptual' will yield as close to 'what you see is what you get" as is possible and, at the same time, support a totally angst-free environment.

Or you can be seduced by the coloristas whose zeal is reminiscent of fire and brimstone tent preachers of yore.Not to say that their way doesn't work, it does. It's just so completely unnecessary.

 

[Bly]

Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not understand?

If you do as previously suggested you will always know exactly what's going to come out of your printer. There's never any need to check and/or tweak anything.

Moreover, sending high quality RGB JPG files to your RIP and using a Rendering Intent of 'Perceptual' will yield as close to 'what you see is what you get" as is possible and, at the same time, support a totally angst-free environment.

Or you can be seduced by the coloristas whose zeal is reminiscent of fire and brimstone tent preachers of yore.Not to say that their way doesn't work, it does. It's just so completely unnecessary.

Ahh.
So your customers can't tell the difference.

Lucky you.

 

[bob]

Ahh.
So your customers can't tell the difference...

And neither could you nor anyone else.

You can unscrew a light bulb by turning the bulb or the lamp or even the room. Once unscrewed you cannot know which process was used. Why make work and aggravation for yourself when it's not necessary?

 

[Bly]

I'm wondering if anyone who has made the investment in colour management technology has found it an increase in their workload and/or increased their aggravation.

 

[Andy_warp]

Build your own profiles...you won't be dissapointed!

We've invested in the spectro, and software, and have made leaps and bounds in our color consistency and quality. I've reduced the color matching process to a third or less. We use the same type of method with colors on the wall, it works fairly well. We run grand format dye-sub, so if a spot color is a little off...people from miles around can see. (not literally) I've also got some consistency from media to media (huge), as well as ink formats. Our aqueous ink now matches our solvent ink. I used to experiment with canned profiles, simply because my previous employer wouldn't pony up the dough for the tech. Making your own profiles is extremely tedious, but the benefits outweigh the dull boring shift or so it takes to achieve. The jpeg compression is also something that kills us in the grand format world. This is simply because the noise from compression doesn't rear it's ugly head, until your print gets up to full scale. Everything is upsampled in grand format due to the fact that digital photo resolution just isn't quite there yet. We received a file last week for a 30'x20' wall. The pixel dimensions were 55,000 x 36,000. We simply don't have time to reprocess and re rip numerous color tests. Our market is quite a bit different than general large format inkjet printing, but profiling has saved our hides!

 

[dypinc]

I'm wondering if anyone who has made the investment in colour management technology has found it an increase in their workload and/or increased their aggravation.

I have been doing color management with printers from inkjets to digital presses for probably at least 15 years now. Not really sure what you mean by aggravation, but I am certain it would be aggravation to not linearize and create a profile for the media and just rely on guesswork, twicking color and wasting media. And how would you keep any consistency if you don't re-linearize as heads age or when you replace heads.

As far as workload I guess you probably would decrease your workload if you don't have accurate color and consistency. I guess it is just my nature but I strive to do everything the best I know how, and I am not going to compromise quality just because I have too big a workload.

 

[Bly]

I was responding to Bob's post that claimed colour management was a waste of time and caused aggravation.
I found the opposite to be true.

 

[dypinc]

I was responding to Bob's post that claimed colour management was a waste of time and caused aggravation.
I found the opposite to be true.

Sorry about that.

Anyone that claims colour management was a waste of time and caused aggravation is clueless.

 

[IGraphicsPA]

Sorry, I'm a newbie...

I have no clue how to post a new thread. I feel like it's right in front of my face and I just don't see it. I wanted to post a thread similar to this issue. So I'll just bring it up here. I have a roland printer. The roland has a "color chart" that I can choose colors from knowing that color will be an exact match. When I need to print a pantone color, I CANNOT just choose the pantone color from my adobe swatch options and it prints a perfect match. I have to mess with the colors till they match the color in my pantone book. I recenlty had a designer send me a file both AI and AP that needed to be printed, she had the images saved as pantone colors and they printed that color without me having to adjust the cmyk values. How the hell did she do that? I need to figure this out! So far, I have not been able to get my printer to print pantone colors the right color. HELP

 

[Terremoto]

Anyone that claims colour management was a waste of time and caused aggravation is clueless.

Totally agree!

We've found that we saved a bunch on ink after introducing a proper colour management workflow as well. Reason being is that with proper linearization of the printer you only lay down enough ink to achieve the colour desired. For instance, if you can get a perfect black with x amount of ink it's not going to get any blacker by laying down more ink.

Dan

 

[shoresigns]

I recenlty had a designer send me a file both AI and AP that needed to be printed, she had the images saved as pantone colors and they printed that color without me having to adjust the cmyk values. How the hell did she do that? I need to figure this out! So far, I have not been able to get my printer to print pantone colors the right color. HELP

A few tips for Roland:

1. The correct Pantone palette to use in Illustrator is usually going to be Solid Coated.
2. Set your default colour management preset to "Sign&Display". Versaworks will do a decent job for most Pantone colours, as long as you're using the correct profile for the media.
3. Try the profiles from the media manufacturers first, then if the colours are off try a similar profile from a different brand, or the built-in Roland profiles. Rename the good profiles in Versaworks and delete/hide the rest.
4. Set your customer's expectations accordingly. Tell them your printer will do a decent job of converting most Pantone colours, but that the colours can shift a bit. It's normal for colours to not match perfectly on different printers, different materials, etc. Being picky will cost more. If they're still worried, you can offer a sample print, at an extra cost.

 

[Laz0924]

Icc

I like Bob's solution, print out the chart what you see is what you get. That works for me..

 

[P Wagner]

I like Bob's solution, print out the chart what you see is what you get. That works for me..

There is no question that this approach (a selection of pre-printed charts output onto the various medias used in production) is easy to implement. The question is, what to do when none of the swatches provide a match to the desired color? Get the customer to go with the closest is the typical answer.

How would you know if this is in fact the 'best' color match that the RIP/ printer/ ink/ media is capable of? The simple answer is that you wouldn't and couldn't. If the sign shop down the street can reproduce the reference color better than you however...