Printed reds on a ValueJet 1204

[jbennett]

All,

I need help with finding a red color that is a darker truer red without a brownish tint. I have used all different icc profiles and cant come up with much that I like. Is there something I am missing pertaining to my color settings? I do a lot of race cars and recently printed a red one that looked fairly red, but looks pretty rough on the car. It has an orangish and even brownish tint. All help is appreciated.


Jbennett

 

[randya]

The printer doesnt know profiles or color matching

That is all from from color management - controlling your color space from design through printing. That takes a defined color space in your images, calibarated monitors, proper input profiles in the RIP and the Printer Output Profile (which is in reality a calibration of your printer to the media.

What the printer gets from the RIP is info like:
PM Commands (Printer Manager Commands)
It will tell the Printer what mode (resolution) that the data is being sent at (if you have that box checked in the RIP), heater settings (again, if you have that selected in the RIP), number, sizes and color of droplets (CMYK).

Personally, I design in RGB, save out as .tiff with embeded profile and use a printer profile DESIGNED for the media.

Writing good color profiles on outdoor ink is a bit of an artform, and even those who know profiling in and out rarely modify profiles, they usually just make new ones.

If you are modifying profiles, be sure to only modify COPIES, because a modified profile is a corrupt profile unless you relinearize and create and read new patches.

About the best, down and dirty color matching available is to print out some color charts like the ones here:
http://www2.mutoh.com/public/Pantone/

Using YOUR media and PROFILE....

The colors that you print will not be 'pantones' but they will be the colors that your media and profile CAN produce. (Pantones are specially designed colors, often times outside the gamut of CMYK ink)
The customer can then choose a color that you know you can print.

 

[Compilla]

My hat is tipped to Mr. Randya

 

[MacDaddy]

Mine as well...

 

[jbennett]

And definitely mine too. I realize how much time and thought was spent in answering my question, and I greatly appreciate it. I am using a printer profile that is designed for the Oracal 3651 that I am printing on; however, I haven't looked into the profile and how it works. For the most part my colors match pretty well with what I am trying to get them to look like with the exceptions of red and orange.

jbennett

 

[randya]

So it sounds as if you are mostly there.

Print out some color charts and see how these reds and oranges look like with your profile.

Get some other profiles and see if they might give you some more options for those colors. Profiles for other glossy vinyls may give you good results as well.


In all fairness, this is a fairly common question, that I had answered on another forum that I cut and pasted from there.

I have since added it to our knowledgebase here:

http://www.mutoh.com/kb/entry/116/

Hopefully, there are other articles and ideas there that may help you get easier and better printing. Many of these are inspired by questions like yours and some here on the forum have submitted ideas and images for our knowledgebase.

thank you,

randya

 

[luggnut]

If you are using a correct profile... then it must be in your software. i know in flexi i can double click the color in the palette and change its rendering intent to spot and get more vibrant colors... in the rip it is set for no color correction on spot colors

jpgs imported in ..are rendered perceptual and don't get as good color usally for me ... but i've changed from using adobe RGB 1998 to sRGB as my color space and the colors are better. there is a lot to learn ...

 

[Compilla]

IF designing within Flexi, it defaults a RGB color pallet. Right click and close that one.

Go to view>Color>open table>Library> Corel> Open Corel CMYK

That pallet works well for me in conjunction with the Oracal 3651G profile .
I normally set my rendering intents for Vector & Text to No Color Correction.

Make sure you are running Flexi 8.6, the ICC profiles have be restructured for more vibrant color printing & added New SpotON Diffusion...

 

[jbennett]

IF designing within Flexi, it defaults a RGB color pallet. Right click and close that one.

Go to view>Color>open table>Library> Corel> Open Corel CMYK

That pallet works well for me in conjunction with the Oracal 3651G profile .
I normally set my rendering intents for Vector & Text to No Color Correction.

Make sure you are running Flexi 8.6, the ICC profiles have be restructured for more vibrant color printing & added New SpotON Diffusion...

I only have version 8.0 v3. I will get the other color pallet you have although I think I have changed most colors to CMYK on my current one. I may need help learning about changing rendering intents for the vector and text to no color correction. You guys are great to help me. I sure do appreciate it.

Jeff

 

[renntech]

wow ask n ye shall recieve...my hat is tipped and knocked off to the next state for that answer thank you sooo much...

 

[MachServTech]

I agree with Randya I never (almost never) tweak a profile...just rebuild it. The two parts that can become disassociated from one another (the calibration/liniarization and the ICC) can cause a major headache if one part is tweaked (the other part breaks) But that all best case. In the field and you dont have a spectro what do you do? You can preview different icc's in photoshop to see if they give you redder reds. Work in RGB and hope that the color you are shooting for is not outside the EcoSolMax gamut.
Also try the http://www.summa.be/pages/color.html color chart make sure you choose the CMY chart for the mixes free of Black

 

[jbennett]

Thanks so much for the great help that I got from this post, especially to MR. Randya for all of his patience. I was able to change the profile for my printer and media to a bidirectional one (graphics 2) for the 3651 that I am printing on. It is unreal at the speed difference with no quality loss over the unidirectional Quality 3 profile that I was using. I also took advice in looking at the different color libraries such as the Corel CMYK. I think I will just have to print color charts and determine colors that I want on my swatch table and colors that I don't. I was able to get a pretty good CMYK pure red color printing pretty well. I have some more questions on things, but I am going to start a new thread since it is somewhat different topic although still related to color. Thanks everyone.

jbennett