Printing perfect or good gray colors in Flexi? Saturation color setting?

[Pauly]

LOL.... I was not jumping on you....
30+ years in this business, I know what I'm talking about. I know you can assign spot colors in Photoshop, but once you save that image as TIF or PSD or any other bitmap, that spot color info is out the window and it's all CMYK or RGB, depending on which color space you saved it in. If you import ANY bitmap image and RIP it, it is not going to identify one single spot color, period.

You can assign Spot/Alpha channels with TIFF for Spot channels. (white ink ect)
But you simply save it as a PDF and your problems are all gone.

 

[ColorCrest]

30+ years in this business, I know what I'm talking about. I know you can assign spot colors in Photoshop, but once you save that image as TIF or PSD or any other bitmap, that spot color info is out the window and it's all CMYK or RGB, depending on which color space you saved it in. If you import ANY bitmap image and RIP it, it is not going to identify one single spot color, period.

When you preflight files using spot color elements from TIF and PSD, do you not find the spot colors immediately identified and an alert of that fact?

I find all the individual colors identified, intact, wanting to be separated into the extra plates if necessary.

 

[CSOCSO]

You cannot use a profile for a vinyl on paper or even a coated paper profile on a uncoated paper

No exp with versaworks or flexi. I use onyx.

And i dont understand what you're trying... From your original post you're trying to print B&W or in grey scale or just using black ink, Either way you're trying to produce a neutral black and white image.
OK. You do not need 27 channels in photoshop to print black and white!

In your RIP, there should be a colour library with pantone/named colours. You should be able to make your own and use your own CMYK mixture. IF so make one and name it "BLACK 01" and set the CMYK formular as 100%k If it's in LAB you will need a spectrophotometer so don't worry about this step.

Open your image in photoshop.
Convert it to gray scale.
Go to your channels and duplicate your Gray channel
Click on your gray copy chanel, go to the drop down box on the right and click Channel Options
Rename it to what your spot channel needs to be (E.G Black 01 if you've created one or Pantone Black C if you're using pantone colour charts ect...)
Select Spot Color. Choose a colour (visual) like red or green.
Make only the gray chanel visiable and keep that selected. erase everything on the art board so it's white.
Turn on your spot colour channel and now you'll see the spot channel and the colour you've selected (visually) so if it's red, now your image will be red

Save it as a PDF.
Open it into your RIP.. In your RIP you should be able to edit the spot colour mixture. If you chose a pantone colour you should be able to change it to 100% K.
There you go.
There's other ways to do it. But just Proved you all wrong in making spot channels in photoshop with a Raster image.

That's all the help im going to give before people start contradicting me again because apparently i'm wrong, you cannot do spot colours in Photoshop and apparently you need more than 20 channels to do a B&W Image.

More or less I understand ICC profiles. I tried creating one and I didn't mean to use paper profile on vinyl profile but there are literally dozens of vinyl profiles out there made for vinyl. Printing with the wrong profile won't cause no catastrophic results. I was told to use the right profile and I said choosing profiles won't fix my problem and help achieve better grays.
If am correct the profiles just tells how the printer lays down ink on the particular media you have in the machine. amount of ink. speed of head, pass, feed, dry etc.
I tried to make a profile where i set the total ink limit to %100 and set individual colors to C%0M%0Y%0K%100 and see what happens. I did not have a chance to try my custom profile.

If you don't have experience with flexi then what are you trying to help with? But thanks for the help anyway.

I know I do not understand the photoshop spot color channel method for sure. I only do spot colors in versaworks but as far as i understand you can not make raster image with spot colors.
meaning: if you have a raster image that is made out of pixels it would be crazy hell of a work to tell individual pixels to have a spot color.
There are no solid colors on my image. Meaning there aren't a bunch of pixels next to each other with the same exact color that i could group and color it with a spot color.
I did watch some videos and i saw you can make spot colors if lets say you put a logo on a raster image and you make the solid color logo. Yes. In that case the spot color would work.
I didn't say 27 channels. I said 27 spot colors. Not sure if in photoshop you need to have 1 channel per spot color. but if I had to take a wild guess my raster image has more than 27 shades of grey.

 

[Pauly]

More or less I understand ICC profiles. I tried creating one and I didn't mean to use paper profile on vinyl profile but there are literally dozens of vinyl profiles out there made for vinyl. Printing with the wrong profile won't cause no catastrophic results. I was told to use the right profile and I said choosing profiles won't fix my problem and help achieve better grays.
If am correct the profiles just tells how the printer lays down ink on the particular media you have in the machine. amount of ink. speed of head, pass, feed, dry etc.
I tried to make a profile where i set the total ink limit to %100 and set individual colors to C%0M%0Y%0K%100 and see what happens. I did not have a chance to try my custom profile.

If you don't have experience with flexi then what are you trying to help with? But thanks for the help anyway.

I know I do not understand the photoshop spot color channel method for sure. I only do spot colors in versaworks but as far as i understand you can not make raster image with spot colors.
meaning: if you have a raster image that is made out of pixels it would be crazy hell of a work to tell individual pixels to have a spot color.
There are no solid colors on my image. Meaning there aren't a bunch of pixels next to each other with the same exact color that i could group and color it with a spot color.
I did watch some videos and i saw you can make spot colors if lets say you put a logo on a raster image and you make the solid color logo. Yes. In that case the spot color would work.
I didn't say 27 channels. I said 27 spot colors. Not sure if in photoshop you need to have 1 channel per spot color. but if I had to take a wild guess my raster image has more than 27 shades of grey.

Im trying to help because your problem is an easy solution.

You dont need a spot colour for every shade. Follow my instructions i gave you. it will solve your issue.
Spot colours work with gradients. if your spot colour is black 100%k then a gradient of that is the rest of the greys to white.
again my instructions tell you how to do it.

OR send me the file. tell me what name your spot colour needs to be and i'll do it for you. its literally a 2 minute job.

 

[CSOCSO]

Im trying to help because your problem is an easy solution.

You dont need a spot colour for every shade. Follow my instructions i gave you. it will solve your issue.
Spot colours work with gradients. if your spot colour is black 100%k then a gradient of that is the rest of the greys to white.
again my instructions tell you how to do it.

OR send me the file. tell me what name your spot colour needs to be and i'll do it for you. its literally a 2 minute job.

I will check it out. thanks