I have been lurking for a while and reading as much trying to learn and have to say this is the best sign forum I havve found. Anyway I have a question. I have the Edge FX and for the life of me I cant get the prints to look right. I tried printing an image from a customer that was vector and spot colors but the solids have strokes and with any color touching each other there is a gap between the colors. I have tried contacting Gerber but they want way to much money and the place we got the machine tells me they dont know. Any help would be GREAT.
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Edge FX Problems
- Thread starter 723fuzzy
- Start date
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
Customer files containing strokes can be used as is in Omega, or you can turn the strokes off in Omega or you can convert the strokes to vectors.
On the gaps where colors touch colors, this is caused by the knocking out of underlying layers unless the path is set to "overlap" or "overprint". There are a number of approaches. If you are printing from vectors, the first choice is to use the Choke and Spread features of Omega. This creates an outline of the top color and sets it to "Overlap" the underlying color. This works well in simpler layouts but will not work as well in complex layouts with numerous colors touching other colors. You get into issues of conflicting orders of colors to be printed.
The work around on complex jobs is to either manually manipulate the vectors to overlap and set the overprint instructions accordingly along with setting the color print order in the 1234 dialog
or
convert all your spot colors to process colors and print as CMYK. This is the easiest and most effective solution IMHO for designs with more than two colors touching. The gaps are eliminated because CMYK works on percentages of the four process colors and will blend together nicely in most cases where colors touch colors.
If you convert to CMYK, you must do so with each spot color individually. I then recommend that you become familiar with the different choices for halftone dot patterns and the effect of LPI settings with them. If you want to emulate the look of a spot color, you will want to look at Classical Dot as your halftone type and a setting of 70.7 for the LPI. When you output the job, it will be subject to color management profiles. I recommend that you turn off the automatic management and manually select the profile named "Gerber Edge II 300 DPI CMYK". You do this in the 123 dialog of GSPPlot. That particular profile is an excellent generic profile that will provide you with very acceptable results in the majority of printing situations.
On the gaps where colors touch colors, this is caused by the knocking out of underlying layers unless the path is set to "overlap" or "overprint". There are a number of approaches. If you are printing from vectors, the first choice is to use the Choke and Spread features of Omega. This creates an outline of the top color and sets it to "Overlap" the underlying color. This works well in simpler layouts but will not work as well in complex layouts with numerous colors touching other colors. You get into issues of conflicting orders of colors to be printed.
The work around on complex jobs is to either manually manipulate the vectors to overlap and set the overprint instructions accordingly along with setting the color print order in the 1234 dialog
or
convert all your spot colors to process colors and print as CMYK. This is the easiest and most effective solution IMHO for designs with more than two colors touching. The gaps are eliminated because CMYK works on percentages of the four process colors and will blend together nicely in most cases where colors touch colors.
If you convert to CMYK, you must do so with each spot color individually. I then recommend that you become familiar with the different choices for halftone dot patterns and the effect of LPI settings with them. If you want to emulate the look of a spot color, you will want to look at Classical Dot as your halftone type and a setting of 70.7 for the LPI. When you output the job, it will be subject to color management profiles. I recommend that you turn off the automatic management and manually select the profile named "Gerber Edge II 300 DPI CMYK". You do this in the 123 dialog of GSPPlot. That particular profile is an excellent generic profile that will provide you with very acceptable results in the majority of printing situations.
NukeProof
New Member
Sounds like im dealing with this same problem. I've tried everything, inlcuding what Fred explained. Does anyone have any other ideas on what to do? I've attached a pic to show you what i'm talking about. You'll noticed the white outline around the red. I'm printing 3 spot colors on white vinyl.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Attachments
Sounds like im dealing with this same problem. I've tried everything, inlcuding what Fred explained. Does anyone have any other ideas on what to do? I've attached a pic to show you what i'm talking about. You'll noticed the white outline around the red. I'm printing 3 spot colors on white vinyl.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Are you using OMEGA?
Select the red shapes and the black shapes, then click on:
Tools --> Choke/Spread
Select the top color (ususally the darker one)... so in your case BLACK, and then select the Choke/Spread amount (this is the amount in inches that the colors will overlap). Generally something in around .01 to .05 should work, but I've seen people use as little as .005.
Hit continue, and you should be good to go! The somftware will have created an outline around the objects that were giving you grief, assigned a color, and given that color an overlap/overpeint property.
Another option is to simply assign an overlapped or overprinted STROKE onto your text: simply select the text, and give it a black overlapped stroke... here you might run into trouble though when dealing with where the black and red and yellow all meet together (like in the P and r of "Protection")