Re: Controlling 6 or 7 inks
Re: Controlling 6 or 7 inks
- Subject: Re: Controlling 6 or 7 inks
- From: Marc Levine <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 21:00:05 -0500
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From: email@hidden
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Reply-To: email@hidden
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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 22:00:29 -0700
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To: email@hidden
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Subject: colorsync-users digest, Vol 3 #462 - 13 msgs
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> Good afternoon.
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> I would like to know how is made all control with Light Black, Light
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> Cyan and Light Magenta.
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> This is a printer feature or is this controlled by software?
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> All ICC's created by PrintOpen or Monaco or anyone, are CMYK.
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> Some softwares (PhotoPrint for example) don't accept these profiles
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> because they are 4 inks, and HP 5000, for example, is a 6 inks printer
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> for this software.
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> Can anyone put some light about this subject?
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> Thanks for all
It may be a little after-the-fact, but I saw this subject in the past few
forums and just had to respond. First of all, most RIPs - in my experience -
DO handle these "multichannel" devices as CMYK. Best, Colorburst, Colorbus,
Harlequin, Onyx, Wasatch, and many more work in this way. The reason this
method is so popular is because this is the correct way to handle these
types of printers! keep in mind that light ink has a single purpose - to
create a smooth blend (especially in midtone and highlight regions).
Therefore, the RIP should handle the relationship of light and dark inks so
that it can properly mesh the two together in the "screening" process. So
even though there are more than 4 printing ink channels, the RIP will
combine the "multi-density" channels (ie. light and dark inks) and will
subsequently work like a 4 color system. Of course, additional primaries can
be added (other colored inks such as orange, green, blue, red, you get the
picture). In such a case, a multi-channel profile would be necessary.
As a side note, I like to be clear that light inks do not increase a
printer's gamut. Any color you can make with light-cyan, you can make with
cyan. The reason that light inks exist is for smoothness only. The increased
quality that you get via light ink usage is a result of 2 phenomena: you
have to print twice as many dots with the light ink as you would with the
dark, and the fact that your eye cannot find the edge of a light ink
droplet. This is why you DON't see Epson using a light yellow ink - you
can't see the edge of the droplets anyway, so why add a light color?
Anyhoo, it is true that not everybody uses this method for working with
these types of printers. From some responses, I understand that Photoprint
handles these devices as RGB. What this says to me is "Hey, Epson's
screening is awesome. Let's not reinvent the wheel and give users a way to
manage Postscript jobs with a nice interface." That seems fine, although
it's not a technically aggressive way to approach things and the downside is
that you're locked out of some of the options that other RIPs provide via
real CMYK device drivers. Then you have RIPs such as Scanvec - that supports
proprietary 6-channel profiles where the light and dark inks are managed
separately as well CMYK, and Wasatch - which supports either both CMYK and
mutlichannel profiles when working with 6 and 8 color devices.
At the end of the day, non-CMYK support for these types of devices is the
rarer animal. The logic behind CMYK drivers is - you're in the driver's
seat. Most will allow you to define the behavior of each printing color
(balance of light and dark, ink limiting, linearization), creating for an
"optimized" device on which you will build an ICC profile. On the other side
of the coin, you have RIPs that drive in RGB (such as Photoprint). The logic
in this case is - you probably don't want to do any of that control stuff.
In fact, you CAN'T do any of that control stuff! I'm not saying one is
better or worse (at least not here in this forum). In all cases, I am
confident that any of the above-mentioned products can yield a spectacular
print. The question is, "How do YOU want to work?"
I think I'm WAY over my $.02.
Marc
--
Marc Levine
North American Sales Manager
Technical Sales Engineer
Monaco Systems
Sales Division
www.monacosys.com
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