is printing lime greens: possible??!! frustrated!!

[SignaramaAurora]

Sherry your best bet is if your using flexi...Have a roland printer...Go with versaworks...
Its color matching to a "T"
I can match pantones, paint swatches, a leaf from a tree...lol
Its the way to go. It will save you headache time and money in the longrun.
So far its been three years of never testprinting colors.
I repeat never testprinting colors!!!! : )
Good luck

 

[artbot]

mimaki guy here. i'm in the process of switching to triangle inks and the first color i had to buy was Triangle Clean Yellow.

when i got the bottle i was astonished. it looked like a white-ish yellow. very "yellow" compared to the deep gold yellow dye that i was used to with roland, mimaki, and lyson.

well BAM. that yellow makes some beautiful color. yellows are YELLOW, limes are LIME, greens are GREEN, etc. it looks like process CMYK has finally started coming out of the printer.

i can't wait to see if the same applies to the KCM.

 

[Rooster]

Printing is a process that needs to be understood to be done well. It's not simply what happens in the machine when you press a certain button.

Today's printers are capable of some amazing feats, but until we see industry wide adoption of built in profiling available in higher end flatbeds, roll to roll machines and certain aqueous printers it takes some outside hardware, software and a person who knows how to use it to really make them shine.

Your post indicates that you're not all that knowledgeable in color theory so suffice it to say you would be well served with a course in color management. What you're after is somewhat possible, but it's not the type of thing easily summed up in a few words.

Once you have some basic knowledge of color management principals and can ask more direct questions regarding how it's implemented you'll get much better responses to your questions. This place can be a great resource, but nobody's going to do your homework for you.

 

[imagep]

lol Gino what a polite way to tell me to go screw myself... you really do have a way with words.
I was not trying to insult or offend any of you... this site has helped me on numerous occasions. If doing test prints and adjusting settings and values is what it takes to get the colors right, then that is what I will do. I was just looking for even a couple pointers on the subject. Sorry to stirr up such a fuss, wasent trying to slap anyone in the face.

Sherry, I onced asked if someone had any "presets" for various materials and jobs for Flexi 8.5. All I got was how it "takes years of practice and learning use my equipment".

I do have some particular settings that I use for our equipment for particular colors that never print like I intend and for some various materials. I have no problem sharing (although I cant help you with your issue because I am using different equipment and software). I really dont know why a lot of people on this forum have corn cobs stuck up their you know what.

They kind of take the attitude that they had to struggle through this stuff and so should you. I also suspect that a lot of these experianced sign guys really don't know a whole lot themselves and are still struggling with issues.

You probably have the same take on things that I do: Figure out a solution to a problem, document the problem and solution so that every time that problem comes up you dont have to reinvent the solution, you simply utilize the proven solution.

Thats the way that SUCESSFUL businesses operate. They have fixes for just about any issues already planned and documented. It is a franchise model. Someone figures out a business model that is very sucessfull, and then duplicates it. You have to have solutions and documentation of those solutions to duplicate a sucessfull business.

I used to work for McDonalds Corporation starting up new locations. Belive me, they have a plan for every little detail. Even exactly how they pack the bags for to go orders is preplanned to optimize bag usage. They know in advance that if they have a sale on Big Macs they know exactly how much their sales will increase. The check the weather when they place their food orders (when it rains, they sell more Fish sandwiches). As long as the managers follow the plan the stores operate perfectly. When the managers dont follow the plan everything gets screwed up, and we get bad food or bad service or both.

I suspect that their are a lot of people on this forum that our floundering with their businesses. Just flopping around trying to get through this crises or that crises without ever actually trying to find perminant and repeatable solutions to problems. Then they get all offended when someone is looking for a perminant solution.

 

[artbot]

man rooster, that was not an answer. that was a diatribe. maybe sherry2006 isn't as technically gifted as you, but twice as creative??? who knows? ...this forum is not for telling people to get try harder. it's to help them.

sherry! color matching 101 (color for dummies. what i did many years ago). put together a file in photoshop of every imaginable lime green variant that you can. it will be about 50 little squares of lime. put them in a long line. triplicate the file so it is now three long rows of lime. saturate the crap out of the top row. keep the middle the way it looks good on your monitor. and darken the bottom one (or lighten). the file will be about 3" x 48" (this way you don't use a lot of material each time).

now print this at the normal setting you are already familiar with. print at some other rendering intents (make sure you choose relative colormetric for one). see if any of those 150 lime squares looks good to you. if not pick one that looks best and see what is different about it. work with this protocol for about 10 minutes between photoshop and the rip/printer. then steal the rgb values from your favorite lime and use it in your graphic.

also, do blame the ink. i'm an artist and yellow is a very touchy pigment. that is why artists have like five different yellows on their palette. it can shift light/saturated colors very quickly unlike reds and purples etc.

over the next few months you can read and bore yourself with color management. or screw color management. you might just get to know your printer/monitor and magically know how to "hit" those colors.

but this is the way many of us started out.

 

[Rooster]

man rooster, that was not an answer. that was a diatribe. maybe sherry2006 isn't as technically gifted as you, but twice as creative??? who knows? ...this forum is not for telling people to get try harder. it's to help them.

It wasn't meant to offend. I was simply trying to point her in the direction of learning about color management.

It's a much more worthwhile investment of time, media and money than chasing color on an unmanaged system. It's also a big cost saver. If I sound a tad militant in my praising of it's benefits, it's only because it works so damn good and has saved me so much over the years. I just can't recommend it more highly.

So passionate perhaps, diatribe no. If it was taken as such, then that was not my intention.

 

[eye4clr]

You want green? Print out some gray and laminate it.

There ya go. Problem solved.

Love it.

 

[artbot]

iz kool rooster. i'd like to know what you know about color management myself. i have stuff in my rip that i'm like ????? some other day. i need to print.

 

[ddubia]

It wasn't meant to offend. I was simply trying to point her in the direction of learning about color management.

It's a much more worthwhile investment of time, media and money than chasing color on an unmanaged system.

Although I can't help the OP with printing as my own knowledge is lacking, your advise was well taken by me.

It reminds me of back in the beginning when some friends were setting up a home recording studio. We needed a sound card but know nothing about them. In one article, the best of all those I read about the subject, the author flat out said I'm not going to tell you which sound card to buy. Why? Because if I tell you then you'll run out and buy it but still won't know a damn thing about sound cards. What I will do is tell you some considerations to think about as you study different cards in your quest to get the right one. By the time you decide on your card it will be an educated decision and you'll know all about sound cards, how they operate and how best to get the greatest advantage out of the one you purchase. And you'll know these things from the day it arrives and before you even open the box.

As hard as that was to hear it made one heck of a lot of sense.

The same thing here. If someone gives me profiles and/or setting I still don't know what they're doing or why it works or how to tweak it if it's not working for a particular project. The only way to master it is to start at the beginning and work through it. And that's where I've been stuck. Where to start?

I'm using an HP8000, work in Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop. So far, for the most part I'm getting WYSIWYG working in CMYK. But there are times when I struggle and a few times where I've fallen short of the mark color-wise. So I'm taking some good advise from this thread and looking into the basics of color management. (I didn't even know what it was called before this) I don't even think buying the software, (I've looked into a lot of it), will do much good without having a working knowledge in the basics.

This is exactly how this board helps me over and over again. Someone points me in a direction by way of answering someone else's question.

Usually it begins at the beginning.

 

[eye4clr]

Rooster's post is 100% dead on and appropriate. I don't think he was being trite or condescending at all.

Some questions require a baseline of knowledge to be able to answer in a post in a forum. This is one of those for sure.

 

[marcsitkin]

Photoshop Gamut Warning

If you have a profile of your printer and media, you can soft-proof your file in photoshop. By turning on the gamut warning, any color not within the reproducible color range (gamut) will show up with an out of gamut overlay color.

Generally speaking, media with a glossy finish that can hold ink combined with inks of a greater color saturation will give you a greater range of reproducible colors. That's why some printers have Red, Green and Blue inks in addition to the CMYK colors most machines have.

That said, it's important to use a working color space that can handle brighter more saturated colors. SWOP CMYK is designed to emulate magazine-style paper in an offset press-not very bright color is possible. If this is your source profile, your starting at a disadvantage. A working space such as ProRgb will have a greater color gamut.

A great book for understanding color management is Real World Color Managment, available via Amazon or most chains.

 

[Hwy]

I know this is an old thread but YES you can print a vibrant lime color on you SP300.
Use the Roland Spot Color Library.
Nice lime colors start at RVW-PR06K through RVW-PR09G

 

[Joe Diaz]

You want green? Print out some gray and laminate it.

LOL Just saw this. Ain't that the truth.