Latex colors?

[SignManiac]

I've been watching the latex printers evolve over the past two years. I was at the HP booth at the Orlando ISA show and I have yet to see a really good vibrant red come off of these printers or some of the other primary colors. I would think that the samples being run at the show would be perfect, yet I didn't see the strong colors I would hope to get?

I even had them print one of their sample files for me and I was still disappointed. All of you who are running the latex printers, what is your opinion of the color gamut that you are getting? Are you running standard profiles or are you all having to tweak them to get your own?

Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[HulkSmash]

I've been watching the latex printers evolve over the past two years. I was at the HP booth at the Orlando ISA show and I have yet to see a really good vibrant red come off of these printers or some of the other primary colors. I would think that the samples being run at the show would be perfect, yet I didn't see the strong colors I would hope to get?

I even had them print one of their sample files for me and I was still disappointed. All of you who are running the latex printers, what is your opinion of the color gamut that you are getting? Are you running standard profiles or are you all having to tweak them to get your own?

Thanks for any thoughts!

In my opinion the latex prints the best blues, The reds can use some work. The blacks are perfect. yellows print kind of dark... in my opinion. Prints greys and gradients perfectly.

 

[signswi]

In my opinion the latex prints the best blues, The reds can use some work. The blacks are perfect. yellows print kind of dark... in my opinion. Prints greys and gradients perfectly.

Agreed 100%. The vibrancy in the blues more than makes up for the loss in the reds, at least with our clients. And the black being actually black vs solvent is a massive improvement (and lower ink costs as we can run 100K instead of a rich black). You can also get a neutral grayscale image without any effort, something that's impossible with solvent.

The one thing I will also note with the reds is that our L25500 does burgundy much better than our Mimaki JV3 solvent. It can hit burgundy shades the Mimaki turns to complete mud.

 

[rjssigns]

I know this isn't really answer, but the HP Z6200 printer has a Chromatic Red as one of it's eight colors. The Z6200 has the same basic architecture as the latex printers, but do not use the same colors translated to latex. The Z6200's claim to hit 90% + of Pantone colors.

 

[HulkSmash]

I think the yellow and black issue is because they share a print head.. which i thought was odd..


what rip do you use wi?

 

[signswi]

Onyx ProductionHouse, printing mostly on Oracal with Oracal provided profiles. We recalibrate our Mimaki profiles but not the HP (though we adjust all the heat/fan settings for our environment).

 

[Dave Rowland]

i just printed a red on a avery 2000 material.. loved it!
The gamut is good, but I have seen 8 colour flatbeds and they are better.

 

[SignManiac]

Anyone print a coca cola red yet? Is it possible?

 

[jkdbjj]

I do a lot of work for the Red Cross Pms 485. It nails it for me, but I am still skeptical on other reds so far.
Other note is reds tend to be the colors that stay oily the most if I run into that issue.

 

[jkdbjj]

Anyone print a coca cola red yet? Is it possible?

Yes on a trailer and a tuck. Turned out well I think. It is never perfect, but so long as it doesn't fall on the orange or brown areas we and the client are happy. In our case it was a nice coke red. Again I'm sure not "the" coke red though.

 

[jkdbjj]

I am sure the photo won't do it justice, but all went well on the Coke Wrap.

 

[Fastsigns2041]

Has anyone hit a solid bright orange with the 26500?

 

[P Wagner]

In general terms, the color gamuts of Epson (Roland Mutoh Mimaki EcoSol) ink and HPs latex ink are not much different from each other. The latex ink, (in concert with the print platform) is able to more easily print uniform and consistent solid colors, in my opinion.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

When I need a good red, I use PMS 186 and it always turns out nice. I just use a PMS book as a cheat sheet and they usually come on VERY close, if not right on.

 

[supermoon]

Ive noticed its hard to get the Monster Green/Yellow fade. to look right. Every other color prints perfectly using flexi rip with hp l26500.

 

[tattoo.dan]

Yeah, I have to remember to adjust the reds. Can't just print RGB red...comes out more orange...other than that, every other color is pretty much perfect. A lot better than my old solvent printers I have had anyway...

 

[SAR.Summerlin]

When I was having trouble with my color I found this post on another forum and have had no problem with color since. I am running Flexi 10.5 for my rip to my HP L25500. And I have to agree blues come out amazing.

 

[dypinc]

You shouldn't have any problem hitting the reds, but you have to get the CM correct. Also try to avoid CMYK reds unless you using a large gamut CMYK profile. You will have much better success with spot colors reading in LAB values. RGB reds work but again CM has to be on and the workflow has to be correct.

 

[mudmedia]

When I was having trouble with my color I found this post on another forum and have had no problem with color since. I am running Flexi 10.5 for my rip to my HP L25500. And I have to agree blues come out amazing.

How do you convert PMS colors to RGB? I use onyx so I am not sure if Color Management settings have any effects as they do in Flexi. I struggle with reds as well and not sure why I can never get a consistent red.

I am sure it is something I am doing

 

[dypinc]

You need to convert PMS to LAB. The easiest way to do this is by reading the values in with a spectrophotometer from a pantone book, if your rip supports this. If you rip doesn't support this I would seriously be looking for a better rip.