On Jul 15, 2021, at 2:16 PM, Miles, Peter <P.Miles@massey.ac.nz> wrote: Our staff member is not sure other than it’s a vinyl ‘banner’ printer. I am guessing some kind of grand format inkjet. He says the media for this printer is about 3 meters wide...

Ah so it’s a UV Curable or Solvent printer. Excellent. Yes, so it’s managed as CMYK(+) through a RIP. This means that any attempt to profile it on your end would account to “double profiling” and could only hurt image quality. They have ink restrictions, a linearization, total ink limit settings and an ICC profile that are possibly less than optimal. UV is easy to calibrate while Solvent and Dyesub processes are particularly tricky to set so people often put up with surprisingly sub-optimal results. I created the ChromaMax calibration methodology so one can hit the nail on the head with these settings every time without guesswork. Aside from offering to send in someone to dial in and optimize their process, you’re stuck with the limits of their process and calibration. My recommendation is to take an evaluation image (mine or your favorite) and make several versions of it in (sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB, SWOP CMYK, etc) with some text in the file indicating the version. Print them all and see which looks the best. This also helps understand how their RIP settings are handling color management, IE: if it is honoring the embedded profiles or not. If they all look horrific they could be used to start a calibration conversation. And of course you can repeat this test with multiple print vendors and make an informed decision about which one to choose. All the best Scott Martin www.on-sight.com Imaging Science for Art