Onyx Rip Issue

[eye4clr]

There are 3 or 4 steps to making a media profile. One is setting the amount of ink that goes used for 100% of each color. This is generally the first step and most people refer to this as the Ink Restriction (not to be confused with Total Ink).

The next step is linearization (sometimes called calibration). This often works with density measurements from your eye1. But to impose some kind of "target density" at this stage seems odd for inkjet of any kind. They may have been guiding you on values to plug into the ink restriction. If so, the values might be universal enough to transport to other RIPs.

Contact your Onyx to make sure there isn't some kind of color replacement going on in the RIP. No way you should get the same output numbers from 100k and rich black. I'd try to guide you on this but I've not seen it do that before and I don't have onyx in house any more. I've moved to Caldera (and love it).

 

[Terremoto]

Although I use a Mimaki wide format printer and Onyx for the RIP what I do is work in RGB.

Here's my reasoning behind this: RGB is a "Standard" and has wider gamut than than CMYK which is NOT a "Standard". Mimaki's yellow is a completely different formulation than Roland's which is different than HP's yellow. Let the RIP do it's job! The RIP, if properly set up, will take your RGB colours (a Standard) and convert them to be compatible with the CMYK (proprietary formulation) your printer uses. In all likelihood the CMYK formulas you use in CorelDraw/Illustrator will be CorelDraw's/Illustrator's "best guess" at what it thinks your inkjet printer requires. That probably works in the bulk of situations but you'll find that some colours are hard to "hit" and very likely your Blacks will be "muddy looking".

Another advantage of doing all your work in RGB (more specifically sRGB) is that the graphics you produce in illustration software are ready for the Internet. Not uncommon these days to find a client that wants large format digitally printed output as well as the same graphics available for Internet use.

Just a quick note on RGB. Adobe's RGB has a wider gamut than sRGB but a web browser will choke on Adobe's RGB but will have no problem with sRGB.

I know that doing your artwork in RGB seems counter intuitive when you're sending the job to a CMYK printer but don't let that concern you as a good RIP is designed to deal with it. I know I had trouble getting my head around it at first but my output is far more consistent now.

 

[the graphics lab]

There are 3 or 4 steps to making a media profile. One is setting the amount of ink that goes used for 100% of each color. This is generally the first step and most people refer to this as the Ink Restriction (not to be confused with Total Ink).

I understand the purpose of ink limits and linearization. However, where do you get the information to select the limit? The scale is from 0-100. I think I measured each swatch and chose the percentage that match the print tech's notes on the correct density for each color.

 

[eye4clr]

I understand the purpose of ink limits and linearization. However, where do you get the information to select the limit? The scale is from 0-100. I think I measured each swatch and chose the percentage that match the print tech's notes on the correct density for each color.

Search my posts to find instructions on how to do it via Chroma (saturation). You can do it by density and still get good results. But chroma saves a bit more ink.

 

[the graphics lab]

Thanks, I appreciate the help.