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Need Help UV color profiling

Hello,

I have been working on building color profiles for our HP Scitex FB500 and FB550 (also a Mimaki UCJV 300-130) using Onyx 19. After building the profile i scan an IDEALAlliance color wedge 12647-7 and compare it to GRACoL2006 using SPOTON software and the results are very poor visual match.

I have recently rebuilt our profiles for our HP latex 370's and the results compared to GRACoL are good.

Is it the UV inks? is it my i1Pro2 spectrophotometer? any suggestions as to how to profile these UV printers and get better color accuracy (to GRACoL) results? Again I'm building the media/profiles using ONYX19, i1Pro2 and SPOTON color check software.

Thanks
 
Im familiar with all of those units, also i have profiled the UCJV as you have in spot on too. I found improvements through toggling my Primary ink restrictions, especially Black and magenta.
 

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
from experience, most profiling software doesn't understand UV unks as it would with solvent. UV ink can hold density and chroma. solvents will get to a point when there's to much ink it'll go flat, bleed, look muddy ect. restricting UV inks can be challenging but crucial for good output.
 

White Haus

Not a Newbie
Some of what you mentioned is a bit above my head, but I do know for sure the inks drastically change color on the UCJV. We spent a full day creating profiles on ours, and the tech didn't take that into account.
If you compare a swatch printed right off the printer with a swatch from the day before, you'll see how drastic it is.

When we have time we'll be re-profiling with swatches that have had the time to properly cure....although I'm not really looking forward to that!
 

Joe House

Sign Equipment Technician
Are you building your latex profiles on the printer or through Onyx. There are a lot of options in Onyx that can affect the profile build. If you're building the latex profiles on the printer itself, as opposed to doing it through Onyx, it tends to be oriented towards a beginner's level of experience with profiling with minimal input.
I've not done much profiling on UV printers, but I always wait for the ink to totally dry on a solvent printer before reading the swatches. If the color does shift as it cures as mentioned above, that is very likely at least one issue causing your problems.
 
from experience, most profiling software doesn't understand UV unks as it would with solvent. UV ink can hold density and chroma. solvents will get to a point when there's to much ink it'll go flat, bleed, look muddy ect. restricting UV inks can be challenging but crucial for good output.

Then whats the best remedy to profile UV inks?
 

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
Then whats the best remedy to profile UV inks?

the only "remedy" is understanding how the software reads inks and creating ink curves that allow the software (onyx) to know when to limit inks and not to limit inks in the ICC profile.

There's no real answer that'll solve your problem.
you can do a "click - read - next" method in onyx and get a 80% decent profile.
 
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