Printer profiling without black ink

General Color & Graphics Printer Calibration & Profiling
1

Hello

I’m using i1PROFILER for ceramic printer profiling. I need to make a CMYK profile for a printer without black ink. The set of inks are C(Cobalt), M (Brown), Y (Yellow) & K (Orange). There is no problem reading brown as magenta. I tried in i1PROFILER to read the orange ink as K on the target chart but the software always had problems with the color that it’s expecting for black.

Please, how it’s possible to make a CMYK profile to use on PS with i1PROFILER with that set of inks?

Thanks.

2

I can see where a typical profiling engine would have trouble with Orange in the K position. Black is more than just another color; it is what fills out the bottom of the gamut as its added to the other colors.

Here are a few ideas:

  • Have you tried putting Orange in the place of M, and then using Brown as the K color? It seems that arrangement would be closer to what the software is expecting?

  • Ideally you would want to have an n-color profile made. This would be a four color profile in which each of your four colors are defined. (And the four colors can be different from CMYK.) The basic version of i1Profiler does not do n-color. You would have to go to software that makes profiles for the packaging industry, like basICColor out of Germany - or find someone who has ProfileMaker GoP. These software packages are pretty expensive, so you may want to ask someone make a profile for you.

You can sent me your measurement files, and I can see if we can do something with them. It sounds interesting!