Print room advice and some links..

[DaveC]

Hi all,

Like a lot of people here im having problems with these darned ICC profiles.

Ive now taken it upon myself to get right into this field and start understanding what the heck is going on.

I do have some initial questions though which i know will get me started off on the right tip.

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How do you guys set up your print room lighting?

My print room is also my office! and so im using the same lighting to proof on my monitor as i do for the printing. what ive noticed is that i get a magenta cast over a lot of images, especially sky blues and gradients of blues e.g. landscapes taken on a glorious sunny day with spectacular blues. I find that the blues tend to sway towards purple hues, and also in places of the image ill get a visible sway of colour towards purple or cyan. Im not talking about banding lines, rather these areas seem to be "cloudy" in effect and almost as if there wasnt enough ink printed! Ill get some examples to show here soon.

Ive also noticed that any very dark area (but not 100% black) of an image also has this effect i described above for the blues. FYI - I save my work as TIFF @ EuroscaleCoated V2 and 75DPI at full size. Could the DPI cause this banding type problem? If i save at 300dpi then my file sizes are going nuclear and it takes the RIP half a day to process! Versaworks. I also have my Adobe workspace set to Adobe1998 default and in the View menu i have my Proof Setup checked on Working CMYK.

Another thing that baffles me in VW is the preview window. Why does it show images so saturated with colour? This is set to high quality adobe1998. But the difference of the preview window to whats shown in the work queue is startling! How come?

Ok thats all for now plenty more to come. in the meantime i came across these sites that some might find useful, and for others its about sucking eggs lol

Cheers all
Dave.

http://www.thinck.com/index.html
http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/

[eye4clr]

Waoh tiger! That's a lot of stuff there...

How do you guys set up your print room lighting?

Replace your 'standard' flourescents with 5500-6000K bulbs with the highest Color Rendering Index (CRI) you can find or care to pay for. Then set your monitor calibration to 500-1000k higher to get a better visual match. The fussier you get with this process, the more you combine the visual reference of white and grays between the display and printed pieces. I prefer to go down the middle of the road and not obsess too much about the monitor but quite a bit about the lighting.

My print room is also my office! and so im using the same lighting to proof on my monitor as i do for the printing

If the color temperature, in other words the color of the light, doesn't match between your room or viewing condition and the color of white in the monitor, then they won't match - this is a hard and fast rule. The whites have to match along with the brightness.

what ive noticed is that i get a magenta cast over a lot of images, especially sky blues and gradients of blues

totally subjective here without an objective approach. Your print system's job is to print the color in the file. Not what you see on screen, or what your laser printer puts out, or ***shudder*** what the customer's desktop inkjet prints. What you need to determine is if the printer is producing true to the digital file. Grays are the easiest to judge since its pretty straight forward if gray is neutral or not......uh, the lighting plays a big part here though

If the lighting is not 5000-5500K, then the grey shouldn't look perfectly neutral even if they are in the file and your print system renders them perfectly. But regardless of this, if its really wacked, you'll know it. If you're not making your own profiles from scratch, it usually is pretty nasty.

I save my work as TIFF @ EuroscaleCoated V2

Are you in Europe? If so, that may be a good choice, i don't really know what would fit best. But in the US, you should go with US Web Coated SWOP purely in the interest of conforming to the common folk's default settings. So, if you are in Europe, your best choice is to use whatever the default for CMYK is in your region and don't try to go for some larger gamut profile for CMYK since this will only add complexity and additional opportunity for mistakes. If you want more gamut from the files you design, work in AdobeRGB and setup your RIP to match that for its input profile.

And no, the ppi doesn't cause banding unless its REALLY low - like 10ppi.

I also have my Adobe workspace set to Adobe1998 default and in the View menu i have my Proof Setup checked on Working CMYK.

If i understand what you're referring to correctly, all this does is strive for a 'softproof' of your images as your current CMYK working space. It doesn't affect your file per se, only how it displays in Photoshop. This could partly account for the significant differences in the appearance between Photoshop and VW.

Happy printing!

[Photoguy]

[quote=eye4clr]Waoh tiger! That's a lot of stuff there...



Are you in Europe? If so, that may be a good choice, i don't really know what would fit best. But in the US, you should go with US Web Coated SWOP purely in the interest of conforming to the common folk's default settings. So, if you are in Europe, your best choice is to use whatever the default for CMYK is in your region and don't try to go for some larger gamut profile for CMYK since



I have to ask,as I prep files for both digital print on the Roland and prepress files for web press output.

Why would I use a swop profile on files prepared for the Roland? Am I out to lunch,or should I be expecting the same profile to work on sign vinyl vs electrabrite with completely different inksets, dot gain factors and gamuts?

I have been using Adobe 1998 for one and swop for the other...


colour me confused.

[eye4clr]

Adobe RGB and US Web Coated SWOP are both considered Working Space profiles. They are a way to work with and store your file without converting it to the actual printer profile. This keeps things flexible in a general sense.

The question really is, why would you do CMYK for one and RGB for the other? Why not just use Adobe RGB for everything and simplify your life? If your color management is working, you should get good results from both RGB and CMYK.

[eye4clr]

Adobe RGB and US Web Coated SWOP are both considered Working Space profiles. They are a way to work with and store your file without converting it to the actual printer profile. This keeps things flexible in a general sense.

The question really is, why would you do CMYK for one and RGB for the other? Why not just use Adobe RGB for everything and simplify your life? If your color management is working, you should get good results from both RGB and CMYK.

What struck me as odd was that you were using an unconventional CMYK Working Space that would really have no significant advantage and would move you away from the default settings shared by zillions of happy Adobe users who i assume are you customers.

[wraps]

so in general i should always work in rgb and then before print convert to cmyk?

[eye4clr]

Well...kinda.

Work in RGB to realize a little more color potential. Then let your RIP convert to the CMYK for your specific system via the media profile for the material.

Don't go from your RGB working space to your CMYK working space, then have the RIP convert to the media profile. A consistent goal is to minimize the number of conversions in the workflow.

Keep it simple.