Making the move from ColorBurst X-ProofPlus to Overdrive

General Color & Graphics Printer Calibration & Profiling
1

I had a few questions and needed a little input/advice to make sure this will go OK.

I am in the midst of trying to set up the workflow I will be going with for the next number of years.
Hardware, Software, color settings etc. Most of these are in place.
The newest of these (and I believe most important) is the RIP.

Most of the work I do here is to prepare artwork for resale in our bookstore. (In-House)
Accuracy is important but more so consistency because I reprint the same artwork over and over for different orders.
The odd time I will send jobs out to offset printers using their press profiles in the RIP.
(so far with X-Proof this has been working perfectly!)

I do have a library of images prepared with the “old” workflow but it will be growing much more this year working in the “new” workflow.
I understand with the switch current images will look different being reproduce in the “new” workflow but the emphasis is on the images I will be preparing going forward.
Probably just tweaking the previous ones for the new workflow.

Whatever In-House work I do usually stays in AdobeRGB 1998 (Photoshop).
Work that goes out is of course in CMYK. (profile usually provided by the printer)
All my work is done in Photoshop, placed in InDesign, then output to the RIP and printed on 7900.

My AdobeCS6 color settings are as follows.(below Screenshot)

My RIP settings (till now with X-Proof) are as follows.(below Screenshot)

[b][size=150]-My belief till now has been that the AdobeCS & X-Proof/Overdrive RIP color settings had to match. (advice from a friend)

-Is this the “correct” way of working for this Photoshop-InDesign-Rip setup?

-Should I continue this setup going forward with Overdrive?

-Also any comments or suggestions on the actual AdobeCS Color Settings/Selections would be much appreciated.
[/size][/b]
eg.US Sheetfed Coated vs GRACol, Relative vs Absolute Colorimetric, BPC yes/no etc

Apologies for the long post.

2

Sure. If your working space in Photoshop is AdobeRGB, then your input color space in the RIP should be the same. Your RIP will be expecting the incoming files that you’ve worked on in PS to be in the same working space, when your RIP gets them.

That should work fine.

Overdrive is an RGB RIP, using RGB profiles and utilizing the printer drivers. You will likely get different results, but it’s hard to estimate how much different. Your total gamut will likely be about the same. If your profiles on the two systems are accurate enough, you might be able to use this method from one of our newsletters to get your new workflow to look like your old output:
colorwiki.com/wiki/Tech_Supp … another.3F

It’s always good to use Black Point Compensation - that will tend to scale your blacks so they are more defined. If you are handing off your work to an offset printer to print, then you can convert to which ever profile they desire. It sounds like they are supplying that to you already and that it’s working well for you. Any time you have a need to save your work in CMYK, you’ll be saving a larger gamut using GRACoL than with US Sheetfed. When it comes to handing off to another printer, the printer may be more likely to expect US Sheetfed than GRACoL - but then it all depends on the printer and what their capabilities are.

3

OK for RGB, but I meant I have been matching ALL the settings till now. CMYK & Gray Working Spaces, BPC on/off, Rendering Intent etc. in both the AdobeCS color settings and in the RIP’s Input Profile Settings.
Is this setup OK or anything wrong with it?

Thank you for pointing out this article. It has a bunch of nice tips.
I wasn’t really expecting the two RIPs to match exactly but they are pretty close.
I’ve done a number of test prints between both of them and the results are similar between the 2 RIPs.

Normally I just used the supplied profiles in X-Proof but for the past year I have been using a custom profile for X-Proof out of necessity.
I did want to find if it is worthwhile to create custom profiles for Overdrive or should we be using the profiles installed with the Epson driver?
Anyone tried making custom profiles? Are there any benefits in using one over the other?

4

I don’t see where you can set things like BPC, Rendering intent in the AdobePS color settings dialog, but otherwise it is OK to have your Photoshop color settings match your RIP’s input profile dialog options. There’s nothing wrong with it. I would say the same about doing the same with Overdrive.

5

I have included 2 screen shots of the settings I have been using till now.
One is of my current Adobe color settings and one of my current Overdrive settings.
Hopefully this helps to show what I mean by trying to match up the settings of both.
I hope this method actually makes sense because it is how I have been working for the past few years.

6

Ahh … I see now.

The conversion options in the PS settings offer the rendering intent, BPC options. So if you use PS to convert an image to a different profile, PS will do it the same way that your ColorBurst RIP will convert an image when it is printing an image. That’s a good idea, and again there’s nothing wrong with it.
Looks great!
Carry on!

And nice screen shots. Thanks for posting those.

7

Sorry for the delay in replying.

I have been doing many, many test prints because after trying your recommendation of GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 instead of US Sheetfed
in the CMYK section of the Input Profiles Tab of the RIP (see shot below) my prints were printing noticeably “Washed out” or “Lighter”.

I even tried recommendations from others to change the CMYK Input Profile from US Sheetfed.
I have also tried ColorBurst GRACoL G7 & Web Coated SWOP 2006 Grade 3 Paper but was getting pretty much the same
results as GRACoL2006 when compared to using US Sheetfed Coated.
From what I have noticed as well, the results don’t seem to change when having BPC ON or OFF and when trying a different Rendering Intent.

Also, ALL of these tests were printed with the IDEAlliance Color Control Wedge applied by the RIP and placed into the InDesign file.
The results were identical with the IDEAlliance Wedge as with all the placed images.

[size=134]What has really been puzzling me is;
[/size]
[b][size=134]Why would the prints change so much when only the CMYK Input Profile was changed
in the RIP and considering that the placed images in InDesign were all AdobeRGB1998?

If all the placed Images were AdobeRGB1998 and “Use Embedded Profiles” was checked
on in the RIP then shouldn’t have the prints with the RGB placed images printed exactly
the same as when the CMYK Input Profile in the RIP was set to US Sheetfed?[/size][/b]

[size=134]Any thoughts or even solutions would be greatly appreciated.[/size]

8

I follow your logic and it makes sense. AdobeRGB is RGB ,and GRACoL is CMYK. So if your images are sent to the RIP in RGB, it should not matter what CMYK input profile is in place there. It should not be used. You should not be getting any change in color with that scenario.

Some other observations:

  • Your control strip is originally a CMYK image, so when it is “applied by the RIP” does it remain in CMYK or does it get converted to RGB? Are your other images CMYK too? Some conversion must be happening upstream of the RIP if you are using CMYK images and you’re ending up with everything in AdobeRGB. Either that, or everything is not in AdobeRGB as you think. Is InDesign exporting the images as CMYK? You could open them up in Photoshop to see.
9

This is exactly what I believed all this time I have been using RIPs from ColorBurst.
And this is exactly what is causing me a very serious headache!

I would have to call ColorBurst about this one. Not sure if it remains CMYK or if it gets converted to RGB.
From matching these strips up to a CMYK-Process Manual I have here, it looks like they do not get converted.
But again I would have to double check this info with ColorBurst to be sure.
The one thing I have observed after doing many test prints is that there is no difference between the control strip that is “applied by the RIP” and the same one that I place into the InDesign document.
When I match them up, one next to the other, no difference.

NO. All the images I have been using for my MANY, MANY tests have been in Adobe RGB (1998) and saved as PSD.
They are placed in InDesign and from InDesign printed to the RIP.
If it helps clear anything up I included screen shots of my InDesign print dialogue settings for the “Output” and the “Color Management” sections.
I have been printing with these settings since I started with ColorBurst. If something doesn’t look right don’t hesitate to speak up!

10

[size=125]After excellent tech support from ColorBurst I believe we can answer these questions and provide a little insight to how Overdrive works.
All the answers and info were provided from Larry at ColorBurst and with permission are offered here to anyone interested.
If you already knew all this great. If not, I hope this info helps. It greatly helped me!

The answers were provided in separate emails and separated below by dashed lines.
There may be a little repetition in some of the answers because I did not edit any of them, just pasted as is.
Please comment if any of this info did help, or to offer any other info, observations or opinions on this topic.
Thank you.

Depending how you create a Job to print, your RGB images may be getting changed to CMYK before Overdrive gets the file.
Properly saved, the RGB data will Never be dependent on the settings of the CMYK Input Profile.

From your App, Save as a PDF with the settings of:

  • High Quality Print
  • PDF Standard = None
  • PDF Format = 1.6

These settings will leave your RGB images as RGB.
They will not be converted to CMYK and therefore they do not reference your CMYK Input Profile.

The above settings:

  • leaves Pantones as Pantone (not process color)
  • embedded profiles stay embedded (printing from the App loses the embedded profiles)
  • RGB and CMYK stay in their original colorspace
  • transparencies stay live (not flattened).

Save these files to our Hot Folder or to a Folder to drag to the Job list.

Now that I understand that you are placing RGB images in your InDesign docs, I can explain a bit more.
If your RGB Images are placed TIFFs or JPegs, then printing from an Application may change the data to CMYK.
The settings above indicate that no color changes should take place and in most, but not all cases, there will be no change.
Even though the RGB color is not being changed to CMYK they will lose their embedded ICC Profiles.
Printing to PostScript does not include embedded Profiles because the PostScript language does not define them as part of the PostScript file, therefore they are discarded.
Printing to PostScript will also flatten transparencies. This is due to the fact that the PostScript format predates the existence of transparent data.
When you have an RGB Tiff and a CMYK dropped shadow, these are typically a transparent blend of different colorspace elements.
Printing will flatten these to the CMYK document colorspace. This causes the RGB image to become CMYK and therefore it will lack in its color richness.
Or worse, the RGB & CMYK intersection will be one color and the rest of the RGB image, that is outside the intersection box, will be another color.

Saving to a first generation PDF with the settings of High Quality Print, PDF Standard = None, and PDF Format of 1.6
leaves all embedded profiles in the document and all transparent elements in their original colorspace (LIVE) for Overdrive to resolve.
Overdrive does an excellent job of handling the intersection of different colorspaced transparent elements and it will correctly
locate and use the embedded ICC Profiles if our Use Embedded option is ON.[/size]