Need Help Color shift when printing directly from TIFF vs placing in Illustrator

[ColorFast]

We are seeing a pretty noticeable shift in color when printing certain images directly from their native TIFF format in Onyx (current version) vs printing them after placing them (linked) into an Illustrator PDF. My suspicion (that we are waiting to test) is that this is due to the "Output" settings of our PDF preset being set to "Profile Inclusion Policy-Don't Include Profiles". My assumption is that this should be set to "include all" or "include tagged" profiles. My question is, what is generally accepted as the "correct setting"? Our workflow is InDesign or Illustrator -> save/export to PDF -> Onyx Production House RIP -> HP Latex 560.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I think you're on the right track. You might be designing in CMYK color mode and linking in an RGB TIFF into the file. If you don't include the profiles, it will default to the PDF color setting.

 

[ColorFast]

The native TIFF and our document color mode are both RGB for what it's worth.

 

[Solventinkjet]

The native TIFF and our document color mode are both RGB for what it's worth.

The input profile could still be different. The TIFF might be set to sRGB and the PDF might be on Adobe RGB or something like that. At the end of the day, if the TIFF prints correctly on it's own and not after linking it in the PDF, something is converting the color and that's usually going to be a profile conflict. Could be something else too of course but that's the first thing that popped into my mind.

 

[dypinc]

The input profile could still be different. The TIFF might be set to sRGB and the PDF might be on Adobe RGB or something like that. At the end of the day, if the TIFF prints correctly on it's own and not after linking it in the PDF, something is converting the color and that's usually going to be a profile conflict. Could be something else too of course but that's the first thing that popped into my mind.

Converting should not be a problem it is assigning the wrong profile that would cause that kind of a problem.

 

[brdesign]

Also, check the settings in Onyx, I believe the default setting is to have different rendering intents for vector files vs raster files

Rendering Intents

My opinion is that it is best to come up with a standardized way to save files for printing rather than tweaking the RIP settings for each job unless you are doing real high-end jobs that require critical color matching. For years my standard procedure was to convert everything to CMYK .tif files and send them to onyx. It's not the most accurate way of doing things but it was very consistent, reliable, and good enough for almost all of the jobs I was printing. Now I save everything as CMYK .pdf files since the newest versions of Onyx are much better at ripping pdf files than it was in the past.