Hi there,
I would like to profile a few offset presses. Its a small company so we don’t have a big budget. What I would like to know is will
Eye-One Proof do the job and what are the advantages and disadvantages for invessting in Profilemaker 5 Publish Pro.
Thank you very much
I can’t speak to the suitability or advantages and disadvantages of the equipment and software listed, but I can say that Chromix’s Press Valet profiling service is very reasonably priced, and the Chromix team is very easy to work with.
Have you done this before. There is bit to it, is the press ready??
The makeready should be performed in the same way as all your other makereadies… otherwise you’re not accurately representing your process.
The Press kit consists of a TIFF image that you print at your standard Solid Ink Densities and Dot Gains. You then send the press sheet(s) to Chromix and they average the sheets, and return a press profile to you.
The image is around 8" by 10" so it will fit on A4 or Letter paper.
From an industry standard standpoint, it’s important that your Solid Ink Densities and Dot Gains are at or near some industry standard. At this point in time, TR001 or SWAP is really the only choice for these specifications. (Visit www.swap.org for more information) In this way, a customer can have reasonable expectations of your process and you can meet those expectations without too much heartache!
Also, keep in mind that you would want a profile for each ink set and commonly used paper. This could be more or less dificult depending on what kind of printing you do! Book printers usualy don’t have more than two or three papers and only one ink… Fine art or specialty printers may find it more useful to produce profiles for only their most used inks and papers.
Theres a bit to it?? I meant the first order of attack is the press room. First you have to be consitant, and in calibration. Start at your CTP or Imagesetter make sure your in calibration and delivering the product the pressroom needs. Then make sure you have things going on on press like correct dot gain, print contrast, trap and at the correct solid ink density. The easy way is to adopt a press standard like Gracol. Once you have this done now its time to start profiling things.
Unless you invest in automation for a eye one I would look at a DTP70 or a Gretag ICColor to scan press targets. ProfileMaker is a good product. You have ProfileMaker for generating profiles, ProfileEditor if you cant quite get there through calibration or you want to compare profiles, MeasureTool for generating and reading targets and Color picker for matching spot colors or screen builds. A real good package. Or you can collect a bunch of other tools to get all this functionality.
A DTP70 is about the fastest way to measure a thousand patches. A EyeOne aligning the little tool and manually scanning the targets can be a drag. A EyeOne does have its uses. As in GMGs proof control or with Color Picker measuring a spot color.
Theres a bit to it?? I also meant that even after you have invested in profilemaker and a target reader its just not that easy. Chances are tou are still not going to make a decent profile.
It still takes a lot of reading and resources are slim. If you do edit a profile chances are you will screw the color up somewhere else. After a while you get a feel for it but you have to invest the time and the company needs to be sold on making this investment in time, resources and money… And then if you dont have anything else to do for the next six months you can scratch the surface
Based on the Gray col try this
Linerize your CTP plate maker
Run set a plates using 100 percent and 50% screen of CYMK
Run ink density to your agreed apon density
read your dot gain for each color
K should be 20%
C should be 19%
M should be about 12%
Y should be about 12%
make adjustments to your output device to make the printed pice match these numbers
Do this for each press. and for each paper type coated and uncoated. If possibl make a color bar that incude a CMYKand a Neutral color built with 50% C 40% MY. This will give you a good match standard that I have found to print Very nice. Not true graycol process but a simple process a small or inhouse like myself can do and get great results.
good luck