Printing problem..

[Luke_Signwalker]

Hello,

I'm having a strange issue, I have to print out C34 - M31 - Y40 on the Mutoh Valuejet 1304 on a gloss polymeric vinyl (mactac). I'm using the input ICC profile Coated frogra 39. The color comes out fine in artificial light, but when I laminate it with gloss or matt laminate, outside in the open air with sunlight it turns.. grey/green...

The business card the customer gave me has also a color shift indoor/outdoor but no green..

What I allready did is use some other CMYK settings without the cyan to become the color and converted it to RGB. All the same result.. Someone?

Grtz.

 

[Red Ball]

We have experienced this issue when printing shades of gray. We think that if the laminate has a small yellow tint, it combines with any blue tint in the gray to create the green effect.
Jim

 

[SlikGRFX]

Greys are very difficult, even when running light black ink your profiles have to be spot on to avoid unwanted coloured hues.

I'd recommend printing a range of grey swatches for each media and profile so that you have a physical reference to compare to. Maybe there is a facility in your RIP to generate a greyscale chart? If not you can create your own file with swatches starting from 5k-95 with combinations of between 5-20% CMY. That usually covers most greys.

 

[Luke_Signwalker]

We have experienced this issue when printing shades of gray. We think that if the laminate has a small yellow tint, it combines with any blue tint in the gray to create the green effect.
Jim

Hello Jim,

The design also contained a grey C38 M29 Y28, but there is the green shade hardley noticable, I reprinted it 40% black..

I think some colors can't be laminated, I've tried everything.. Maybe with an opti-clear lam.. But the job is to small to make costs.. And the result has to be matt..

I've forwarded this problem to Mutoh, I'm awaiting their reply..

Vincent

 

[Luke_Signwalker]

Greys are very difficult, even when running light black ink your profiles have to be spot on to avoid unwanted coloured hues.

I'd recommend printing a range of grey swatches for each media and profile so that you have a physical reference to compare to. Maybe there is a facility in your RIP to generate a greyscale chart? If not you can create your own file with swatches starting from 5k-95 with combinations of between 5-20% CMY. That usually covers most greys.

Hello,

Thanks for your reply. When printing grey from black or a greyscale photo there are no problems after laminating. I've got feedback from Mutoh and they say almost the same as you, print the patches (color chart for the input profiles they provided) and laminate, then choose the most matching color

But I'm still a little fustrated that I can't print the color provided by the customer..

Vincent

 

[Solventinkjet]

Go into the color replacement tab in Flexi and use the eye dropper tool to select the gray area in the image. Now you will be able to see the values that the RIP has interpreted. So your 40% black might be interpreted as C8% M4% Y0% K 58% even though you only sent K40% the RIP changes the values to accommodate the white point of the vinyl etc.... In this same tab you can override the interpreted colors and just input K40% and 0 everything else. If you do this, no other color except black will print from the printer. If you laminate this job and it turns green than you might just need to play around with materials such as changing the laminate brand.

 

[SlikGRFX]

Black printed at various % without any CMY will always look brown, not grey.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Black printed at various % without any CMY will always look brown, not grey.

You have bad ink then.

 

[SlikGRFX]

You have bad ink then.

Must have

 

[Andy_warp]

Metamerism. It's a pretty common thing. Unless you have controlled d50 lighting for proofing this will almost always occur. Pantone makes little stickers that only show up in the d50 controlled light. I battle this constantly with tradeshow graphics. I can't assess color in the show hall (all of them have different lighting, too!) so splitting hairs can be moot. The other issue can be if the client is lighting the sign...I have no way of knowing that light temperature.

I'm sure many digital printers WISH they could just print the color provided by the client!!!

I built a nice icc profile, and most colors still need a little tweak due to limitations of my ink gamut. The problem with taking a cmyk build from a client is your rip will change it to device values anyway. Also there is no standard cmyk ink. They are made by different mfr's with different measured lab values. This is why Pantones are a friend. You have standardized printed books that you can reference. They make a process book, but the numbers only correlate if you are using Pantone cmy and k. If you are digital printing, I'm sure this is not the case.

Black only grays are ok in certain situations...but I'm with SLKGRFX...it's usually weak and shifted anyways. The way we handle this is we have one rich black that we tested for. Every project with a rich black intent get's our known build plugged in. We translated RGB at zero to get our cmyk rich black build.

Chasing a gray or black temperature is then ruled out. When we tested we tried several rich builds...but the winner was the one that graduated to the most neutral grays.

 

[burgmurk]

Most laminates have a yellow tinge, i've always manipulated colours to account for it when needed. Sometimes (like when you're trying to do a really pale blue) it's just not possible, sometimes you can liquid lam or spring for the optically clear stuff. I've had a client complain that whites (i.e. unprinted, but laminated stock) were too yellow, i congratulated them on their eyesight and convinced them nobody but them would notice

 

[Joe House]

The yellow tinge is how cheaper laminates get their UV protection. To do it right, you'd need to make your profile by reading three swatches of laminated test charts.

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