Printing Grey - magenta problem

[matti]

Hi there,
When we try printing grey even with ZERO magenta in the file, our Roland VS-540 seems to be printing magenta when we examine under a loop. Is there a way to get magenta to stop firing so we can get a better looking grey?

 

[greysquirrel]

Printer? Rip?

linearizing your profile will help...if you are using Onyx you can turn pure hues on to achieve the same.

 

[bob]

No matter how your create a particular gray your RIP is going to print it in CMYK not K.

You can fiddle and diddle your profiles to get closer, certainly one of the of color nostra in these waters will be happy to expound at length on dealing with this sort of problem. At the end, there really isn't a universal method for printing a good gray. I tend to avoid it if at all possible. Failing that, you might try creating the tone you want in LAB space setting A and B to 0 and adjusting L. Since your RIP is going to translate everything into LAB space then into dithered CMYK you might save a transformation. Depending.

 

[matti]

Rip

We have both the Versaworks Rip and the Firey XF. Both seem to give us issues with printing Grey where it fires magenta even when our file (made in Adobel CS) has no magenta in it. Is there a setting on the Firey XF where we can turn this off?

 

[dypinc]

We have both the Versaworks Rip and the Firey XF. Both seem to give us issues with printing Grey where it fires magenta even when our file (made in Adobel CS) has no magenta in it. Is there a setting on the Firey XF where we can turn this off?

In Fiery XF in the Color Management tab set Color Optimization as Black as Inkjet Black. Set Manual Cleaning to at least cover the percentage of black in your grey. Also make sure you are using the APPE PDF Print Engine and not PS3.

One other absolutely critical setting is your CMYK source profile must be set to the same working CMYK space profile that the black only graphic was built in.

 

[dypinc]

No matter how your create a particular gray your RIP is going to print it in CMYK not K.

You can fiddle and diddle your profiles to get closer, certainly one of the of color nostra in these waters will be happy to expound at length on dealing with this sort of problem. At the end, there really isn't a universal method for printing a good gray. I tend to avoid it if at all possible. Failing that, you might try creating the tone you want in LAB space setting A and B to 0 and adjusting L. Since your RIP is going to translate everything into LAB space then into dithered CMYK you might save a transformation. Depending.

Ignore this Color Monkey, he has no clue what he is talking about.

 

[GP_Oz]

Printing with ICC...
Its like painting cows to look like horses pretty much.

For example...no black is equal, nor is it "black" if you will. And i am being very loose here with my words I know.
So for 2 different ink sets on 2 different machines to achieve "black/grey" they will use a different mix of dots to achieve this.

You cannot just turn off ICC and print a greyscale image as the ink itself might have a noticeable hue in the mid to low.
The cure ?

Good profiling
Colour maintenance
Device maintenance - if your dots are not landing in the right places a grey will shift FAST. Running a re-lin cannot compensate for a crooked head or misdirected nozzle - you would need to run the icc again.