curious as to how some of you have your design programs setup for color? . .
. . Do you only setup prepress files in RGB or CMYK? . . . What profile do you attach to it SWOP for CMYK; ADOBE1998 for RGB? Neither?. . . Do you assign the CMYK postscript to a vector EPS file? . . .Do you use a postscript level 3 or 2? . . . Is your shop completely color managed between your large format printer, desktop proof printer, monitors, etc....or do you fly by the seat of your pants? . . .
I do love the colors the Seiko produces but really do wonder if one has to change his/her shops workflow or invest in color management equipment to acheive acceptable and deep colors. . . .
dear anon, what's your point here. are you asking do we all use color management or are you offering a service to help?
most people should be utilising color management at the very lowest levels, as from my point of view, it is now playing a very major role in my business. it used to be looked at as an unknown quantity, but with the qualification of the required processes and procedures for using and understanding color, in has to be embraced within the company policy.
users demand exact matches and only by using color management can you get that.
We use the binuscan clolorcase auto to make a ICC profile for each of our media. Try to print a grey 60% in full color mode, and see if it's not too much yellow or magneta...
RGB or CMYK? well it depends, the Gamut of the seiko is pretty large, so you would think that print a document in RGB mode would offer more colors, but imagine if one of your customers is printing some of his document in the traditional off-set way and ask you a few quantities in a different size as digitals prints. Well in this case that's bettter to print in CMYK mode because, the off-set won't be able to print such a large area of colors than the seikos in RGB. If it's digital photographs where you will be the only one to print, then go for RGB.
ink limit: very important to find out optimal (max.) tolerance of material
linearization: to "align" cmyk (colour) curve of your printer with values that are right
icc: to give you best colour curve for spot colours (similar to linearization in what's doing to colour curve)
grey balance: it means exactly that - balancing curve to get perfect grey parts (from white to black)
all parts are important if you want perfect profile...
ink limit alone doesn't mean anything..
linearization is good for pictures, but without icc it want do good spot colours. this two parts doesn't always mean that you will get good grey parts - so you'll need grey balance profile also...
cs6060 what do you use to make your profile? What about the pantone? how far are you from it with your process? Have you ever compare your print to a cromalin? When you talk about linearization, are you talking about the linearization of the icc profile to match the limit of density of the seikos or i miss something?
you print scale of cmyk (cyan from 0 to 100%, magenta form 0 to 100%...). then you spectrometer reads values and compares (software not hardware ofcours) it with values that should be, and changes cmyk curve to bring printer printouts closer to perfect curve.
icc is when you print lots of patches of different colours. in some software's you can choose number of patches. more is better. that patches you read by spectrometer. here you have again option to choose how many passes per patch you want - with more you get more accurate readings. than software compares what you have printed and what it gave you to print - and then calculates "changes" what had to be made when printing similar colours...
this all i know and talk is from my working experience, conclusions from what i did and saw, so there's always possibility that i conclude something wrong...
Well, here is how we proceed. 1) First, like you i determine the ink limit. 2) Then i do print a set of patches like you said and compare the value with the spectrometre. 3) If the density is too high with the correct value for the printer (most of the time) then the software propose me to print an other set of patches (a file in .tif) with the appropriate correction in order to linearize the icc profile. 4) I print it, compare again the value with the spectrometre. 5)The software produce an output icc associate to a linearization curve in the same file. The icc icon on the computer has now the "b" letter.
Cs6060, i'd like to know wich software and spectrometre do you use?
Well for the pantone i didn't find a way to avoid the CMYK interpretation of the non CMYK PANTONE, (sorry i don't remember the correct name in english) as we realized that the gamut of some digitals printer (the seiko for example is larger) than the CMYK traditional off-set, i thought there was a way to approach some of those pantone. For the moment we tell our client we are close to the CMYK interpretation of the pantone. Like you i've maybe understood something wrong. At the moment i'm trying to find some good literature about the subject in our specific activities.
well... i use either the profiling module within PhotoPrint or within Caldera, but also use Profilemaker. yes i use Eye-One from Gretag Macbeth.
it's all quite simple and straightforward.
and most of the time we just prepare CMYK files without profiles - sometimes we use the Seiko profiles.
with Seiko sometimes we drop the ICC correction in case of graphics, if the profile is not smooth enough there will be some banding in very light gradients.
For the moment we tell our client we are close to the CMYK interpretation of the pantone.
