Reds are orange and gray are green

General Color & Graphics Printer Calibration & Profiling
1

I have profiled a eco-solvent printer for a vinyl media with printer calibration and ICC profile. The reds that result from this are more to orange, making the profile useless. I didn’t manage to get a good result with this and I used a lot of ink and media, so I need some suggestions or opinions on what should be done to get a good profile.
I have another similar problem on a dye printer (HP5500) with polypropylene paper where the grays are green.

I use Onyx PosterShop 7.0.3 for calibrating media and i1 Pro with the basic program from GretagMacbeth, i1 Match 3

thank you,
iulian

2

Here are a few ideas:

  • It sounds like you are making a CMYK profile, so which Separation setting did you use in i1 Match?
  • Are you using the largest target available? (The ECI target with 1496 patches)
    [*]Are you following good practices on your measurements? [list]- Does your target follow the same path as your regular workflow?
  • Are you letting the target colors “cure” for several hours before reading them?
  • Are you sure there’s no color management - use of profiles - when printing the target?) [/*:m][/list:u]
3

Thank you Patrick for your ideas.

Answering your questions:

  • Yes, I am making a CMYK profile, using Liquid Ink Jet 400 (GCR3, black start 40 - max 100, total ink coverage 400) which I think is the most appropriate regarding that the red color is poor.
  • I used all targets available, including the ECI with 1496 patches, and the results where in the same area
  • The target is the same as the workflow and the target color are let to dry for a long period time.
  • About the color management I don’t know for sure because I am using “All ICC Profiles OFF” setting in Onyx Preflight, but I think that there is no color management applied to it.

I am thinking that I need to work on the profile and edit it, but I will need more information on editing profiles because I have only basic knowledge in color management and profiling. So, from where can I get this information?

4

Here are a couple of articles from our newsletter concerning profile editing:
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Editing_Profiles
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Editing_Profiles_for_Fun_and_Profit

To do a hue shift, you would need a more advanced editor like the ProfileMaker Editor. (The i1Match profile editor cannot do this.)

Concerning turning off color management:
You can confirm this by checking the target that you are printing. Find out which patches are composed of all black ink only. (We use a visual ECI target that has a gray ramp in it which is easy to identify.) Then look at those patches close up (under a loupe) to see if there are other colors mixed in there. If you are truly printing without profiles, then that gray patch should be made up of all black ink. With color management on, you will probably find other colored inks in there.

5

With Onyx if you get a darkish green cast it generally means you are not using an icc profile for whatever reason. In your case you have an early version of Onyx 7 - the first really stable version was 7.06 - now 7.1 is very good. With your version there was a bug which meant profiles built outside the rip and imported, were not registered properly. To confirm this open Media Manager at the profile library page and drill right down into your profiles to view the individual calibrations / icc. They should have a green tick. If not, the profile is not being used!. Simply right-click and “set as default” to turn on the green tick and hey presto! There was also a problem with profiles with an “icm” file extension - they needed renaming “Icc” for them to be recognised. Thankfully the latest version has sorted these issues & can be downloaded FOC from “www.onyxgfx.net” just click on the appropriate product icon to download. Then run the file & update your existing v7 to 7.1. I would suggest EVERYONE with an earlier version 7 to do this - don’t worry it will keep your existing profiles & workflow.