Now what do I do?...

[reelguitars]

I decided I wanted to move into the digital printing business. I bought a Mutoh Outdoor 62 and put it into perfect condition. I also have a Walco laminator that does the job. Here's my dilemma...I wanted to do a simple 2 color sign that I was going to mount on MaxMetal and then hand cut around all the letters with my trusty little jig saw. I needed a royal blue over a yellowish gold drop shadow which was no problem to do in either Photoshop or Flexi 8.1. You know what's coming now...the dang blue printed purple and when I started doing research, I've found that this is a BIG problem. My dilemma is, if I can't print a 2'x3' sign and the colors be correct, how am I going to print a car or boat wrap with any confidence? I won't ramble on about this, can you help me? Thanks, David

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Short term fix, if you can find a setting (as I am unfamiliar with your setup), to bring the magenta down for your profile, this should fix your problem.

Long term fix, gotta read up on colour profiling and colour management.

 

[reelguitars]

So should I reduce the size of the print, and just keep adjusting until I like the results? After all, my motto is "innovation through trial and error". lol

 

[reelguitars]

Oops...when I said "reduce the size of the print", I meant so that I could adjust the color, print a small test print, and readjust if I had to.

 

[Typestries]

I don't care how good your profile is, but if you have 100% magenta and add cyan to that to make it look blue on screen, it's gonna print purple. Especially problematic if you make your blue on screen look blue using RGB color space.

You could also pick a PMS color in flexi (say 286, for example), your existing profile should handle that better than a mixed color that just happens to look blue on your screen.

Buy a PMS swatchbook and start using that to select colors-yes, they may not look right on screen but they should print properly.

 

[Smacka]

If you want to save a bunch of profiling, (for the short term) just print out a Pantone color chart using your current settings and pick the blue that prints to your satisfaction and change the colors in your artwork to those colors. Works for me.