FW: Really Really Frustrated
FW: Really Really Frustrated
- Subject: FW: Really Really Frustrated
- From: jim morris <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2000 11:59:17 -0500
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on 11/6/00 1:10 PM, options digital color at email@hidden wrote:
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I have posted to this list previously regarding our problem trying to print
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a neutral gray using a Visual Edge Rip and Epson 90000. We also contacted a
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number of manufacturers including RIP manufactuers, color profiling software
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companies and Harlequin technologies. The response was typically to use
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another RIP or different profiling software. Weren't we surprised this
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morning when we finally spoke with Monoco Color and Yarc representatives,
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both who both told us that this problem with neutral grays was a known issue
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among ALL 6-color printers. This is the first we had heard about "a known"
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issue with 6-color printers. Can anyone confirm this issue or if they have
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dealt with this problem and can suggest a possible workaround?
We had a similar problem using a Rastergraphics PP5000 (6 color piezo) and
Postershop 4.5. Getting a neutral gray was bad enough but God help you if
you had a neutral gray that graduated because the color shifted with almost
every tonal change. Unfortunately, being new to Postershop at the time, we
made some incorrect assumptions as to how the software worked (we simply
used the supplied canned profiles for each paper type) and drove ourselves
crazy as a result. When we upgraded to ver 5.0 we discovered the Profiler
utility that came with Postershop which allowed us to create media
"profiles" for each paper. This involved linearizing the printer, setting
ink restrictions, and profiling (either ICC or gray balance) for each
media/resolution/dot pattern configuration we were using. Because we did not
have the ability to create ICC profiles we used the "gray balance" option to
profile the media and while it was a pain to do (you have to print out a
stepped gray bar, evaluate it visually and then manually adjust the CMY
curves and re-print the bar for each set of adjustments) the results were
well worth the effort. The first gray bar we printed out went from yellow in
the quarter tones to cyan in the midtone to a lovely pea green in the
shadows (even though it was neutral on the screen); once we got that bar
printing fairly neutral across the tonal scale most of our printing problems
were eliminated and now we can print pretty neutral CMYK "gray" images using
very little black ink.
NOTE: I'm not absolutely sure about this but I believe that Postershop 4.5
used color management provided by Monoco while version 5.0 now uses LOGO.
Having never used the Profiler utility with 4.5 I cannot say whether we
would have had different results.
Jim Morris
DCP, Inc.
email@hidden