Please tell me what Im doing wrong, im here to learn

[TDFcustomSL]

Ok, so i have a banner that i need to print this weekend for a family members baseball team. They gave me a helmet sticker so i could get close to the color (maroon). I made the banner exactly how they wanted it so dont beat me up on the design, afterall the customer is always right, right? anyway, i can not, for the life of me, get the freakin thing to print the colors right. the Maroon prints ok but then all the greys and the brushed aluminum tile from aruora graphics have a pink tint to them. I tried turning color correction off just to see what would happen and the greys print fine but the maroon prints blackish brown. I have re dont the artwork several times in RGB but can not get the result i need. Im new to the digital printing and would love to get some advice, Im tired of wasting time and material trying to get it to print right. Thanks in advance. Oh yeah, designing in corel and flexi and i realize doing test prints on vinyl will have a different result than on gloss banner material, im just trying to get it close.

 

[4R Graphics]

Ok well welcome to the world of printing.

Seriously if you are using canned profiles(ones you downloaded) then you are going to have these kinds of problems.

Without a lot of mods to your rip and building your own profiles you will almost always have a problem with black and grey.

Most people will tell you that your blacks and greys will have a slight pink or green hue to them. I had this same issue for a long time once i really got into color matching and building my own profiles i now can print perfect greys and black blacks and I can hit almost every pantone color as well. This was no easy task and I am affraid you are not going to get to my print level by the end of the weekend.

However here is some good news since your greys are pink we know that your magenta is the problem so you need to find in your rip how and where to do a linerization.

When you do the linearization you will need to turn down the magenta this will help fix your grey problem BUT it will probably cause your maroon to print wrong.

So you really need to do the linearization and adjust all the colors to the best of your abilitie. Without the right equipment this will never be right but you may be able to COMPENSATE things to get it close.

I just checked your profile and see that you are running Flexi 10 Pro I dont use flexi but have in the past and Flexi will allow you to adjust everything and build your own profiles but you will need a photospectrometer to do it.

When you do the linerization you need to look at the cmyk chart and adjust to the number where it is full but not bleeding or saturated. this will get you close I will tell you this on my JV33 I had to turn C down to 65 M down to 60 and the Y to 60 and the K (black) down to 55.

These numbers were for my machine and were found with photospectrometer. So if you have to adjust them down alot its not uncommon but as i have stated with out the right equipment it will be perhaps better but never great.

Good Luck to you.

Oh I almost forgot since you dont have the equipment you may waste 10 feet or more trying to get it right. So load some cheap stuff or buy yourself an i1 and send me a PM I will be more than happy to help you build a great profile.

 

[TDFcustomSL]

I was actually considering investing in a color munki but im not sure if it will do what i need it to, ive also looked at the i1 but it seems like there are a lot of different things that pop up and im not sure what exactly i need and what will work for my printer. I have a lot more research to do on them but wouldnt push the idea away.

 

[bob]

It's not that difficult.

First, what elements are vector and which are bitmaps? I assume the tacky but inexplicably popular metallic fill is a bitmap but what about the rest of the elements?

In spite of the protests of the strident profile neurotics shoveling on this sand pile, you only need one or two profiles for virtually everything. I've been printing for some years now and my entire process is pretty much what you see is what you get without obsessively calibrated monitors and an entire library of profiles. Just soft-proofing, one or two profiles for everything [one of the two I have I never think to use], and understanding my equipment. I'll match my product against anyone's.

As important, if not more important, than your profile is just what are your rendering intents?

 

[TDFcustomSL]

The logo and the camo are vectored so I could change the colors to what I needed, the brushed aluminum and the screws are jpeg

 

[FrankW]

A Color Munki is not suitable for calibrating large format printers. Depending on the RIP you use you should need a i1 with i1-Profiler.

 

[pixworx]

Try original printer driver

1) try the printer driver that comes w/ your printer,

2) try to convert your images in Photoshop to RGB color space,

3) locate the settings in the printer driver itself and set it properly (right paper/ink/setting), get maximum colorgamut

4) try an error of small patches in photoshop, (choose printer manage color instead of photoshop mannage color)

*usually bypassing rip, colormanagement, and using native driver are ways to access maximum color gamut of the printer....since you'll be tweaking color by trial and error...

 

[Mr_Disaster]

Well, I had some issues like that referring to color and let me tell you I dont understand them at all, this is why...

My technician installed a color profile that printed just as good... cmyk or rgb images, may be not 100% accurate but close enough. We change the plotter computer, installed the rip software again, same version, same color profile and now it only matches cmyk images. Im pretty sure im missing something but I havent found out what. If anyone could help, Ill appreciate it. So, color profiles are a mess.

BUT as Im not here to ask, but to try help and as 4R Graphics says you wont be a full color profiler in a weekend this is the simplest solution I´ll try and the one I´ve used... Color Curve on the Rip.

My rip is PhotoPrint 10, so in cases like this I change the color curve INDIVIDUALLY based on the wrong print, lets say you´re getting a pink image on medium tones... take down the curve on magenta a little bit on the 50% point. Or your black is too heavy and wet when it means to pure black... take down the curve on black at 100% point may be to 90%.

It is not a permanent solution or an exact science but maybe it helps you getting out of the trouble by the weekend.

 

[mark galoob]

ok weve heard from the folks that have spent ENORMOUS amounts of time developing color profiles for their digital printers and truely i applaud you guys for your dedication.

now from the other side

ive spent hours upon hours trying to match colors for customers when i first started out in digital printing 8 yrs ago. i have come to the conclusion that its a complete and utter waste of time. first, every being on this planet sees color differently and each being sees different colors differently. so this problem makes it impossible to match colors exactly with digital printing because second, each printer prints each color differently. even with the same profiles, my printer and your printer will each print the same color differently, because you and i see the colors differently. third, each software sees each color differently, and fourth, each computer sees color differently. i think you can see where this is going...



my point being is print the damn banner and move on and tell your "customers" that you aren't able to do exact color matching with out an recieving an hourly fee.

once i started telling customers i have an hourly fee with no guarantee of success, so how much do you want to spend...every customer has declined the offer, and just said to get it as close as you can.

mark galoob

 

[bob]

The logo and the camo are vectored so I could change the colors to what I needed, the brushed aluminum and the screws are jpeg

Review your rendering intents and try setting them to 'No Color Correction' or, failing that 'Saturation', for everything except bitmaps. Set the rendering intent for bitmaps to 'Perceptual'.

 

[Mosh]

I printed out a pantone color chart on each media I use, then when color matching I refer to this chart. It will show exactly how your printer will print each color. Then look at the chart and choose the color, it may look weird on the computer screen but will print the color you chose. Hope this helps.

 

[Speedsterbeast]

I printed out a pantone color chart on each media I use, then when color matching I refer to this chart. It will show exactly how your printer will print each color. Then look at the chart and choose the color, it may look weird on the computer screen but will print the color you chose. Hope this helps.

+1
I also have printed colour charts on the wlls of my office. Use them as a guide, and yes, most of them are way off from what they look like on the monitor

 

[truckgraphics]

Print the greys. Cut the maroon.

 

[TDFcustomSL]

Review your rendering intents and try setting them to 'No Color Correction' or, failing that 'Saturation', for everything except bitmaps. Set the rendering intent for bitmaps to 'Perceptual'.

This did it, thank you so so much. Ill post some pics after I get caught up on some stuff. Everyone kept telling me just print it and say sorry, well im not like that, i would rather lose my @$$ on a job and learn something from it than just give up and move on just to run into the same problem another time. I appreciate everyones input!

 

[401Graphics]

Everyone kept telling me just print it and say sorry, well im not like that, i would rather lose my @$$ on a job and learn something from it than just give up and move on just to run into the same problem another time. I appreciate everyones input!

i like this guy!

 

[dypinc]

+1
I also have printed colour charts on the wlls of my office. Use them as a guide, and yes, most of them are way off from what they look like on the monitor

If they are way off from what they look like on the monitor, you are color management challenged.