Trying to hit a pms color I have printed before!

[SqueeGee]

Hello, We have a HPL26500 latex printer we bought last year using Onyx postershop 10.1. The first job I ran I printed some pantone colors for a client. One of which was a percentage of a color. Since then I have learned more about the printer and changed the passes/ some other settings. Now when I try to print a new job for the client the colors are way off... I can still print the old files and they are the same. In preflight they are the same values, but the output is completely different. I have tried switching all of the settings back to the original with no sucess. Does it have to do with calibrating the printer? Would that change the color that much?

Thanks,

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

In your rip settings are you using any color correction? So if you open an old file and print it still prints the same color but if you do a new file with the same color it is different?

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

Is it possible that the computer has already switched the color to a CMYK or RGB instead of a PMS Spot.

 

[P Wagner]

Hello, We have a HPL26500 latex printer we bought last year using Onyx postershop 10.1. The first job I ran I printed some pantone colors for a client. One of which was a percentage of a color. Since then I have learned more about the printer and changed the passes/ some other settings. Now when I try to print a new job for the client the colors are way off... I can still print the old files and they are the same. In preflight they are the same values, but the output is completely different. I have tried switching all of the settings back to the original with no sucess. Does it have to do with calibrating the printer? Would that change the color that much?

Thanks,

I would like to be able to help, but i am unclear on several points in your post. For example "Now when I try to print a new job for the client the colors are way off... I can still print the old files and they are the same." Does this mean reprint from the original ripped file in the buffered job queue, or reprocess?

Also this "In preflight they are the same values, but the output is completely different".

If you have not re-linearized (color calibrated) the printer fairly recently, you could certainly do so.

 

[SqueeGee]

It is something with the way it is ripping. I can re rip an old file(pdf) and it will not print the original color. I have tried removing the spot color replacement when ripping and that isn't it either. The only way i can have it print the original color is with the original file that was processed. a few months ago I went through this and all I had to do was switch it back to 8 pass and everything worked. No such luck this time.

Preflight in Onyx gives you cmyk values, and both the original and New files show up as the same percentages. Of course they are spot so from what I have read Onyx the values in preflight mean nothing when they are spot.

 

[milchad]

It is something with the way it is ripping. I can re rip an old file(pdf) and it will not print the original color. I have tried removing the spot color replacement when ripping and that isn't it either. The only way i can have it print the original color is with the original file that was processed. a few months ago I went through this and all I had to do was switch it back to 8 pass and everything worked. No such luck this time.

Preflight in Onyx gives you cmyk values, and both the original and New files show up as the same percentages. Of course they are spot so from what I have read Onyx the values in preflight mean nothing when they are spot.

Since the already processed file prints as you expect it, the problem must exist when you are trying to RIP the file. It's a good idea to take screen shots of your settings so that you can duplicate them for future jobs. I don't have Onyx but in Caldera, we set our rendering for spot colors to absolute. Here's a screen shot of how our spot colors are treated in Caldera. Not sure if it helps you though.

 

[SqueeGee]

I don't see anything in onyx where you can see spot color replacements for individual jobs, it has a list of pantone colors but I don't even see the lab colors that correlate with those colors.

 

[SqueeGee]

Update: I still can't figure out how to get back to the original colors. Like I mentioned before it was the very first job I ran on the printer and I think it must have to do with the linearization. Because all of the other settings are the same. Like I mentioned before there are 2 colors in the job and both are Pantone colors only one is 70% of a pantone. The 70% color is the one that is off. The vehicle needs to be picked up today so I am going to have to go with what I can print, but thanks to everyone who suggested ideas.

We have a JV3 using ProductionHouse 7 and I never had this problem replacing spot colors in preflight (although there are other quirks). I'm not liking 10.1 so far.