Mimaki printing wrong colors!

[kraigsnowden]

I am having trouble w/ a project right now. I have (2) 10' X 3' Banners that I'm printing for a display in a lobby. It's on that synthetic non-curl material. I'm not a good profiler so I'm just using a canned one. I'm not sure if it's the profile, or what I'm not tweaking, but it's printing brown instead of red. It is a dark red, but I'm just not happy w/ how it's coming out.

Do I need to tweak something in Onyx I'm not seeing? It was sent to me as a .pdf, and that looked bad, so I took it into Photoshop, and saved it as a .tiff. Then I used the embedded tiff profiles as my profile type, and it was still brown. Here is the design.

[Marie]

Is color correction ON or OFF? When I print Photoshop files, I use ON - the colors are much brighter. With it OFF, the colors are muddy - like the background on your banner.

[ChicagoGraphics]

Why not just recreate that, It's so simple.

[kraigsnowden]

Because it's already created. And that's the color they want. What would re-creating it exactly the same do? It's still going to print the wrong color, it's in my profile somewhere. I think turning the color correction on helped for once.

[iSign]

I'd probably try to isolate how much of the problem might be the profile by printing a small sample on a more familiar media. If I could get the right color with a familiar profile/media combination, at least I could hold off on tweaking the file for starters... but if I couldn't, then I might try tweaking more saturation, brightness & adjusting hue a bit.

[Rooster]

Good luck with dark saturated reds. You'll be chasing that one for days.

It's probably going brown because it's out of gamut and being remapped to the closest color it can find.

[ChicagoGraphics]

I didn't know they sent you vector artwork, If you have a Pantone book take the closest colour it matches to, then tweak the colour.

[Modern Ink Signs]

Is the PDF file vector or raster?


If vector, open the file in ONYX > PREFLIGHT > PRINTER AND MEDIA tab > COLOR MANAGEMENT pulldown arrow > ALL ICC PROFILES OFF.

Run a sample and see what this does for you.


and/or

try a different profile.

[visualeyez]

The file was more than likely created to look good on an RGB monitor, and the color values are horrible mixes when converted to CMYK values. Is it really that hard for you to hold a sample of the logo up to your color chart and plug in the color numbers that tell your printer to print the color that your client represented to you via proof? With the proper CMYK color value, your print will look great even when using a generic PVC banner profile.

That is all...

[schurms]

What are the colors in photoshop on screen ? You have a lot of profile picks in there. I have always gotten spot on color in photoshop.

[eforer]

The file was more than likely created to look good on an RGB monitor, and the color values are horrible mixes when converted to CMYK values. Is it really that hard for you to hold a sample of the logo up to your color chart and plug in the color numbers that tell your printer to print the color that your client represented to you via proof? With the proper CMYK color value, your print will look great even when using a generic PVC banner profile.

That is all...

You should always send RGB to your RIP and let the RIP sort out the color correction. CMYK embedded profiles are gross approximations of narrow gamuts found in other printing mediums. Any solvent printer will have gamut that exceeds that of your off the shelf CMYK profiles like SWOP v2 and the like. The input profile that 99% of canned profiles were setup for is Adobe RGB 98. There are many threads dealing with this and color profiling in general.

My advice, by a spectrophotometer and start rolling your own profiles, or hire a pro to do them for you. Machines vary a lot from one to the next and canned profiles can't compensate for that. Besides, you have no idea what went into a canned profile. Its like a hot dog, if you knew what was in one, you probably wouldn't eat it.

[visualeyez]

You should always send RGB to your RIP and let the RIP sort out the color correction. CMYK embedded profiles are gross approximations of narrow gamuts found in other printing mediums. Any solvent printer will have gamut that exceeds that of your off the shelf CMYK profiles like SWOP v2 and the like. The input profile that 99% of canned profiles were setup for is Adobe RGB 98. There are many threads dealing with this and color profiling in general.

My advice, by a spectrophotometer and start rolling your own profiles, or hire a pro to do them for you. Machines vary a lot from one to the next and canned profiles can't compensate for that. Besides, you have no idea what went into a canned profile. Its like a hot dog, if you knew what was in one, you probably wouldn't eat it.


I would agree with you if the file required more than 3 shades of red and some black. Anything photographic or with photo objects should definately be tagged with or converted to Adobe RGB 98 prior to rip however. In cases like this logo I tend to just use my color chart printed on the closest media possible. It's not a fine art print or anything...

[Replicator]

An easy and immediate fix if you need it . . . As I did this weekend !

1. Print out a CMYK color chart using the settings you always use for a particular media.

2. when setting up a file for printing (in your design program), open your saved color chart.

3. Look at the printed chart to determine the colors you need in the print and then drag the correct colors from the onscreen chart to your design colors, and you print will be perfect everytime . . . !

[eforer]

That was some really good advice, and I might give it a try to "fine tune" for picky customers who really need to hit PMS colors.