L26500 On Board i1 with flexiCloud

[IconicWraps]

Anybody ever try adjusting profiles with the on board i1 that's inside the L26500?
I've been having some color issues with flexi...some reds are a bit orange and cyan is more on the darker blue side.
I'm new to flexi and still learning about advanced color profiling, I was running caldera 9.1 before flexi and the pre canned caldera profiles were pretty much spot on perfect.
I'm running Oracal 3165RA and 3164 for decals.
haven't ran anything else through it yet because I don't want to waste the good stuff trying to set up the colors.
If anyone has any good suggestions or profiles they can send me to try out that would be great.
I know thers no one size fits all profile but it would be a great starting point.
Thanks:signs101:

 

[dypinc]

Why would anyone go from Caldera to Flexi?

 

[IconicWraps]

sorry I should have been a bit more specific, I was using Caldera Visual rip which only has rip/print/cut features and no design features.
It was included with the Printer when I got it.
I was designing in Photoshop and Illustrator then sending them through caldera.
so with flexi I get lots of time saving features

 

[ProWraps]

sorry I should have been a bit more specific, I was using Caldera Visual rip which only has rip/print/cut features and no design features.
It was included with the Printer when I got it.
I was designing in Photoshop and Illustrator then sending them through caldera.
so with flexi I get lots of time saving features

LOLZ. no you didnt. go back to caldera learn a design program, and benefit. sorry to be so direct. but i have experience.

 

[HulkSmash]

you switched from Caldera to flexi.

that's like going from a 2013 porche, and going to a 1998 Honda Civic.

Flexi will absolutely destroy you in terms of color and ink. Learn how to use illustrator and photoshop, and then rip with caldera using the right profiles.

 

[IconicWraps]

dont worry I have thick skin and can take it. I'm here to learn and absorb as much info from you guys as I can, you guys have been there done it so i appreciate any info you have for me.
Im still very new, I'm not a professional designer by any means but i know my way around computers and programs.
Illustrator is a very powerful design program that can pretty much do everything we need it to, but the learning curve is also very steep and theres like 5 different ways to do one thing.
I picked up flexi due to it being more user friendly and I can convert images to vector base and contour cut them to make 500 copies in 15min in flexi vs 1-2 hours in Illustrator due to the learning curve.
but like I said I'm open to suggestions and dont mind constructive criticism

 

[P Wagner]

Flexi is terrific as a design tool for cut vinyl or CNC routing, but it is not the most robust design environment for print in my opinion. Similarly, it is terrific at driving vinyl cutters, but less than ideal as a RIP used to drive LFP (large-format print) devices.

Flexi does have some nice design features, but it suffers from significant limitations with raster data sets, connectivity with files created elsewhere, issues with gradients, and long-standing idiosyncrasies and bugs, that all combine to make it a substandard environment for print output.

While the learning curve for Adobe Creative Suite applications is significant, it is well worth the effort. Using a professional RIP (Caldera or Onyx, among others) is also well worth the apparent extra steps in the workflow.

Re the on board i1, my understanding is that it can be used for calibration (linearization), but not for other types of measurements such as characterization (creating the ICC profile). I could be confused about this, based on other HP printers that have i1's on board, like 5000/5500 or Z-series, however.

 

[ProWraps]

flexi SUCKS. ok done.

 

[FrankW]

Flexi, as Caldera too, is a HP certified RIP for the HP Latex,and it works fine with this printers. Since they use a PDF RIP-Engine and import PDF-transparencies with FlexiCloud, problems with using data from foreign applications decrease significantly. Problems with gradients in the output are mostly problems of the default dithering type in the past.

Altough every single RIP-Software has it's own advantages and disadvantages, Flexi is a tool you can live with. Onyx, as suggested here, have still PDF-issues with version 10.2.5 which drives me crazy, and has a bigger learning curve than Illustrator.

If you have the ICC-Profiler-Option you could use the built-in i1. But für the build-in i1, the swatches are very large, I would suggest to buy a separate one.

 

[P Wagner]

Altough every single RIP-Software has it's own advantages and disadvantages, Flexi is a tool you can live with. Onyx, as suggested here, have still PDF-issues with version 10.2.5 which drives me crazy, and has a bigger learning curve than Illustrator.

Onyx Thrive drives all jobs through the Adobe APPE engine (other Onyx RIPs still use JAWS), and this has virtually eliminated issues with transparencies or other advanced effects in the Thrive product.

I will agree that the patch sets that the on board spectro requires makes it's use very wasteful in terms of media vs the stand alone i1 device.

 

[HulkSmash]

Flex is not a design program. Illustrator makes much better traces. Flexi is only good for making outlines on designs for cut files.

that's it.

 

[IconicWraps]

thanks for your input guys! I agree that Illustrator and photoshop are designated design programs and way more powerful than flex.
That was not my issue tho, I have not completely abandoned Illustrator/Photoshop.
I use Photoshop and illustrator to design wraps and big files but I'm using flexi to create banners, decals, signs, truck lettering and anything else thats not super complicated. like i said I'm not a pro designer by any means and still learning tons everyday.
Im currently running a mac and a PC on single screen which i toggle inputs to access both and I have them both sharing a network so all my saved files can be accessed from any computer.
Certain things I do make in Flexi and export it out as an EPS to print on caldera for better print quality.
My goal is to make Flexi Print as good as caldera color wise so that i don't have to export to caldera for print cut.
My question still stands, has anyone ever used the on board i1 to create or modify color profiles?? (FRANKW AND CASTEK) thank you for that info, I'll look into possibly a standalone device

 

[GAC05]

you switched from Caldera to flexi.

that's like going from a 2013 porche, and going to a 1998 Honda Civic.

2013 Porsche 911 turbo
3.8L 6 cyl automatic 7spd
city 16 / highway 24

1998 Honda Civic
1.6L 4 cyl manual 5spd
city 30 / highway 39

........

 

[FrankW]

Onyx Thrive drives all jobs through the Adobe APPE engine (other Onyx RIPs still use JAWS), and this has virtually eliminated issues with transparencies or other advanced effects in the Thrive product.

Even with Thrive, as with Onyx 10.2.5 too, the RIP-Engines crashes as soon as using PDF's with fonts which are not embedded. Not only giving a RIP-Error or something of this kind, just crash. Printing the same files out of a RIP with Aurelon PDF-Rip Engine, they not only do not crash, they show, rip and print the files correctly.

I have mentioned that issue to the support, as a beta-tester of 10.2.5 have posted it in the beta-forum, and have informed the product manager. Nothing happened since months. A customer who uses Onyx in an automated workflow and has hoped that some PDF-issues are solved with the upgrade to 10.2 is totally disappointed that some things are solved, but new issues arised.

 

[FrankW]

Flex is not a design program. Illustrator makes much better traces. Flexi is only good for making outlines on designs for cut files.

Altough Flexi is optimized for Vinyl cutting, I use it for designing too. Not only that Flexi do not loose the basic properties of objects when welding, shadowing and so on makes design easy too. It's easy to impress Illu- and Corel-Users when showing them some key features (including tracing and specially manual vector optimization) of Flexi.

 

[k_graham]

Even with Thrive, as with Onyx 10.2.5 too, the RIP-Engines crashes as soon as using PDF's with fonts which are not embedded. Not only giving a RIP-Error or something of this kind, just crash. Printing the same files out of a RIP with Aurelon PDF-Rip Engine, they not only do not crash, they show, rip and print the files correctly.

I have mentioned that issue to the support, as a beta-tester of 10.2.5 have posted it in the beta-forum, and have informed the product manager. Nothing happened since months. A customer who uses Onyx in an automated workflow and has hoped that some PDF-issues are solved with the upgrade to 10.2 is totally disappointed that some things are solved, but new issues arised.

If the other RIP prints correctly is it retrieving files from the installed fonts on the PC perhaps being able to use other fonts unlike Adobe that uses ps printer fonts only for their RIPs, so their expensive RIP can look more useless than a free windows printer driver.

In the case of Thrive being a Adobe RIP the included Fonts will be PS fonts only, not Open or Truetype - do you think a Font Conversion program conerting all the RIP pc's fonts to PS style would allow it to run without crash if the Fonts were actually there in that PS format?

I'm assuming font conversion should be legal if you are using the fonts you already have a licence for, just you are making them useable for printing. If so have you found a preferred program, I see one opensource program listed called FontForge for instance.

Ken