One for you color theory guys?

[ABPGraphics]

I'm having trouble printing colors. Recently a guy came in wanting us to print a control panel layout for him and he wanted some grays. So, I go into Flexi and make a sample list of grays. I started out with 45 Percent Gray (CMYK Colors) and went up to 100 in 5% increments. I printed the sample list and he brought to my attention that they all had a "Red" hue to them. I looked at them and noticed that there was quite a bit of red in them. Looking closely you can see the red spray dots. Anyone know what might cause this? I made the colors myself and I know for certain they were all 0,0,0,40-100 So why would my printer use the color red at all when there isn't any in the color combination?

 

[Bigdawg]

It's your profile - at least to some extent...

welcome to my pain...

 

[signgal]

Also under rendering intent under color setting in the advanced panel... I've found, especially when making my own colors, I get a better result with everything on spot. I don't know if everyone does that but it's not what I was advised to do in the beginning. I'm not a good listener LOL

 

[J Hill Designs]

if you want tints of pure black, don't use color correction, or do a color substitution if you can in your RIP

 

[LittleSnakey]

Try going to the advanced tab in production manager, then click color settings, then goto rendering intent tab.
Now if its a vector you are trying to print click on the pure hue for the vectors and select the black and white boxes and try again.

I hate printing grey!

 

[eye4clr]

You have 3 choices...
1. leave your color management settings as they are and edit out the grey through trial and error
2. turn off the color conversion in your RIP, make sure the source file you're working with is CMYK format, then spec the greys in the file to be K only values
3. make your own custom output profile.

Obviously each of these options have their own pros/cons. Editing color isn't typically fun or quick unless you're REALLY good at it. Turning off the color conversion and printing only K is easy, but most K inks are not perfectly neutral grey and the K dots are very obvious. Some customers may say your prints look "low resolution" as a result. Making your own profiles takes knowledge, skill, and some investment in a spectrophotometer and software that works with it.

The best solution is to make your own profile. The quickest/easiest solution is to turn off the color conversion and only use CMYK format files.

Good luck, you're running up against the most common color management problem there is, printing good greys.

 

[Sign Works]

In Versaworks you can select "Preserve Primary Colors" in order to print just using the color values designated in the artwork.

 

[Tovis]

Are you using Flexi's Production manager or different rip.

also what printer is this and what type of file?

 

[ABPGraphics]

Alright, I don't know how you guys dug this up again lol but I saw it on the front page and noticed several new replys. At the time of the project the file I was using was an EPS file and I'm using Versaworks for cutting.

Where do I find "Preserve Primary Colors"?

 

[SEOR]

It's all about the spot w/ relative colometric rendering, profiled to SWOP2

 

[eye4clr]

Perceptual, Spot, and Relative Colorimetric should all give you neutral greys. Relative and Perceptual will give differing lightness values, but both should output neutral through a properly functioning profile.

EPS, PDF, TIFF, or JPEG should all output the same color if you've got your settings correct. You should also be able to get neutral grey from RGB or CMYK source files...again if your output profile is working well and doing its job.

Preserve Primary Colors only works for "solid" colors like 100% cyan, or 100% magenta. If you have a gradient or partial value, the color conversion kicks in.