Do you do it before or after lamming?

[Custom_Grafx]

Quick question of curiosity to others here who make their own colour profiles.

How many of you do things the right way, VS the quick way?

* Do you wait for your print to completely dry before doing your linearisation, and then also wait before doing your colour chart?

* Do you wait for 24 hours, lam, then profile? for both the linearisation and the chart?

* Do you have a separate profile for your gloss, and matt lam?

* How often do you refresh your profiles? few months? weeks? years?

I'm pretty happy with the results I'm getting recently, and now these questions are surfacing. I only started doing my own profiles just less than a year ago.

As for me, I like to profile after laminating, and I wait for at least a couple of hours after printing so it's quite dry. I have never waited a full 24 hours... should I?

Looking forward to hear what you guys do.

 

[MikePro]

its like "coated" and "uncoated" in a pantone swatchbook. I have one profile for all my different media, but I have seperate color charts for matte and glossy laminate finishes for reference.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

You don't find that the laminate can sometimes change the colour quite a bit? I was thinking about having a separate profile for matte, gloss, and no lam.

Also thinking about even doing one of reverse applied to clear acrylic. Anyone got experience in that? Does the distance of say 2mm between the surface of the acrylic and the back make a difference in the reading?

 

[Mosh]

All depends on the deadline, most of the time waiting is NOT an option.

 

[Bly]

I usually wait 20 minutes or so for the print to dry.

I found most lams give unpredicatable results when profiled so I just do unlaminated. Occasionally I do a quick and dirty profile if I have a grey image which a lam is giving a cast to.

 

[sfr table hockey]

You don't find that the laminate can sometimes change the colour quite a bit? I was thinking about having a separate profile for matte, gloss, and no lam.

Also thinking about even doing one of reverse applied to clear acrylic. Anyone got experience in that? Does the distance of say 2mm between the surface of the acrylic and the back make a difference in the reading?

I might be missing something here but are you meaning you would add a laminate to your media before you read your test prints with something like an Eyeone?

If so I would have never thought you could or should do that.

Adding laminate to a color chart to see what a color looks like is as far as I have gone.

Also with time to off gas or dry before reading a test print, I found it made more of a difference with the waterbased printer on canvas than it did on the solvent printer and reg vinyl. I still leave both over night to be safe and be sure that you when read a test print, it should be more accurate.

I also tend to use the same profile for a pile of media and it works fine.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Bly, do you mean unpredictable because different batches of lam cast different colours? or that the adhesive interferes with a good read? The last 2 profiles I've done, I have done after lamming and the results were good. Did I just get lucky?

My reasoning for profiling after lamming, is that I noticed quite a change in colour between lam and no lam, so logically thought doing it after lam made sense. Am happy to hear reason though, as I'm still relatively new to the whole colour profiling thing.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

I do it whenever I want. Bow chicka bow wow.

 

[boxerbay]

depends on the client. 98.5% dont really care. 1.5% are super anal and need special care. On the 1.5% the proper way would be to profile after lam and profile for each lam. For ex 3M 8518 has a yellowish tint that will produce results different than using another laminate. If you 1.5% client is doing 2 jobs one with 8518 (car wrap) and one using lets say a cheaper rtape glossy - your pantone 336 on each will be different due to lam and noticeable and your client will complain.

 

[sfr table hockey]

My reasoning for profiling after lamming, is that I noticed quite a change in colour between lam and no lam, so logically thought doing it after lam made sense. Am happy to hear reason though, as I'm still relatively new to the whole colour profiling thing.

I guess in theory the eye one reads the test prints and changes the amount of ink of each color to get the right color results. I guess it's not really doing an ink limit just by reading the test prints, so if you laminate and then read them it will try to make a profile that makes the end results with laminate look propper. If it actually made way more ink being printed onto your media, it may not come out right to start with.

I would have thought a matte laminate would cause an issue with the reading but if you have done it and the results were better then you have proven otherwise. It is a lot more profiles to make as opposed to making multiple color charts.

I would be interested in the comments of some of the guys who have been making profiles a lot longer than I have.

A bonus would be only needing to create one layout for a customer and being able to print it with a variety of laminates and get the same or very similar results. I have not needed to do that yet.

 

[Mspec]

I once had a customer that ran aqueous jobs on canvas, then applied a liquid UV lam as a finish. This site went to a pigmented ink, but did not like the results they got.

I found that the ink and canvas combo they were locked into really did not work well. The ink had to be limited so much to prevent bleeding that the resulting profiles gamut was severely clipped.

Since I noticed a lot of punch was added after lamination, I built a profile based on laminated output.

( printed all the targets, let them dry 30 minutes, laminated, then read for each step. )

By doing this, I was able to build a great profile, with less overall ink, no bleed, and no loss of midtones in portrait work. The only issue was that for future color calibrations, you would need to read a laminated target to keep it straight.

Keep in mind that the work coming right off the printer did not look great until it was run through the laminator, but the end results wound up in households all over the country.

I have never needed to do this again, but if the same situation ever presented itself, I would follow that workflow again in a heartbeat.

 

[Rooster]

I once had a customer that ran aqueous jobs on canvas, then applied a liquid UV lam as a finish. This site went to a pigmented ink, but did not like the results they got...........

This is the same thing I've done in the past for giclee work. It works very well and I'd set different profile profiles for gloss, semi-gloss and un-laminated. It really did make a big difference when you're color correcting prints that are sitting right next to the original. Pigmented inks were very tough to get good color out of when they first came out. We went third party for ours and managed to out do the dye based inks on our other printer after proper profiling.

I've also measured a 2 delta e shift in density by letting aqueous inks dry for three days. They darken slowly over time as they dry out. After three days the measurements didn't move.

I've noticed that there's a slight color shift with something like a 180CV3 and 8518 gloss lam. I get better profiles without the lamination (larger delta e volume), but I created a profile with the lam just in case it ever becomes an issue. I wasn't seeing a lot of difference in the colors, but it was measuring out to be about 1-3 delta e's in a lot of colors. Since 1 delta e is what the human eye can perceive as a difference, I'd have left it alone if it was just 1, but 3 could be visible.

Thicker lams have a much greater affect on color. The cheaper 3-4 mil laminates add nice gloss and protection, but they cut back the available colors, usually because they darken the white point. The extra depth a gloss lam might add to the shadows, gets lost in the reflectiveness anyhow and the darker highlights prevent you from reaching a lot of colors that require a bright white base layer to achieve.

If the lam you're using is screwing up your colors then look at using a thinner cast or optically clear lam since they have less effect on the white point.