Epson 9800 + Onyx -> Proof device -> Press workflow pr

General Color & Graphics Printer Calibration & Profiling
1

We’ve been running Onyx 6.5 on our Epson 9800’s (and also our Mimaki JV3’s). We’ve used Onyx with other devices in the past 3 years also.

Now we are trying to prepare a large number of prints for output at a litho shop. They requested our output profile so that they would be able to use their own proofing workflow to match our Epson 9800 output.

I sent them the ICC profile we generated in Monaco Profiler 4.7. We also have Onyx’s profiling add-on, but do not use it any longer. When they attempted to link our Monaco generated Epson 9800 profile into their proofing device, the result was light-years off.

Source images are CMYK TIF’s. We printed them as US Coated SWOP v2, perceptual.

Since our profile did not work for them, they sent us an ECI target to print so that they could generate their own profile of our device. We printed their target using the same settings as the images we are printing - only we chose Relative Colorimetric intent instead of Perceptual. We still had the US Coated SWOP v2 profile selected.

When they attempted to use that profile which they generated from the ECI target which we printed, the resulting proofs were still light-years off.

I could reprint their ECI target, and this time turn off all profiles, but that would generate something approximately equivalent to the Monaco profile which I already sent them.

They claim that they print proofs from other Epson shops using those shops’ profiles all the time, and never have this problem.

At this point I am at a loss.

2

Well if i read this right you did something different to the file they sent you. If you want it to match you need to print it just like you always doing using your device and the same paper. They should then be able to print the same image and adjust to match your print from there. If they have something with any thing done differently how can you expect them to match your job.

good luck

3

I would ask them for the details of their workflow–in other words, what colour transformations their performing and what profiles they are using.

For instance, if you print SWOP(Source) to Epson9800(Destination), then they should print SWOP(Source) to Epson9800(Proof) to TheirPrinterProfile(Destination) in order to simulate your workflow. If they are using your profile as a source (i.e., Epson9800(Source) to TheirPrinterProfile(Destination)), then their prints will look nothing like yours.

Generating a profile from a colour target printed through SWOP is worthless, as far as I can tell. I see no way that this could help.

More info about how they are printing will help to assess what is going wrong.