-
I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...
Gerber Edge Process colors not sharp
- Thread starter Greggie
- Start date
omgsideburns
New Member
why is your vinyl so dirtttyyyy... it's making the print get spots in it.
your printing the process colors from a vector or bitmap? fred will get in here and give you a lesson on the settings for it any time now.
your printing the process colors from a vector or bitmap? fred will get in here and give you a lesson on the settings for it any time now.
omgsideburns
New Member
the edge isn't exactly know for really good 4color.. spot colors are great. if you can mix two spot colors to get the color you're looking for it might be your best bet...... we have a chart printed out showing the mixes of all our colors.
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
Are you printing from Flexi or Omega? If Flexi, I am unable to be of much help.
What halftone and LPI settings are you using? What color profile are you using? What model Edge are you using. What brand and grade of vinyl are you using? What brand of process foils are you using?
These are all things that will affect your final result. The important difference between spot and process printing is that with spot colors you are usually printing a 100% fill so halftones and LPI settings are not an issue. Neither is color management. Once you change to process, then all these must be set to give a desirable result because you are printing various percentage of each color and you will see the halftone dots.
The halftone dots come in different shapes ... some will look better than others in any given image. They are selectable either in Composer if you use mega or in Production Manager if you use Flexi. The LPI (lines per inch) are also settable with the higher the number giving you a smaller dot size but also less tonal quality and more banding if there are any gradients present in the image.
Your color management profiles are also important. Each profile will alter the color that gets laid down to compensate for differences in material being printed and the foils being used in an effort to end up with the same look on different materials.
What halftone and LPI settings are you using? What color profile are you using? What model Edge are you using. What brand and grade of vinyl are you using? What brand of process foils are you using?
These are all things that will affect your final result. The important difference between spot and process printing is that with spot colors you are usually printing a 100% fill so halftones and LPI settings are not an issue. Neither is color management. Once you change to process, then all these must be set to give a desirable result because you are printing various percentage of each color and you will see the halftone dots.
The halftone dots come in different shapes ... some will look better than others in any given image. They are selectable either in Composer if you use mega or in Production Manager if you use Flexi. The LPI (lines per inch) are also settable with the higher the number giving you a smaller dot size but also less tonal quality and more banding if there are any gradients present in the image.
Your color management profiles are also important. Each profile will alter the color that gets laid down to compensate for differences in material being printed and the foils being used in an effort to end up with the same look on different materials.
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
There are advantages and disadvantages to each program. When it comes to working with process, I prefer Gerber's approach which allows you to control your halftones and LPI at the image editing level ... and on an individual object basis. Flexi only provides control at the output level and it is only global.
On the whole, my recommendation is to use Omega for your Edge work. It was built from the ground up for Edge printing.
We have the same issues with the process colors on the Edge. The result is always grainy and only looks good from a distance. The spot colors look fantastic, but I have never made process colors look good. The Spectratone settings give you some other options by allowing you to layer spot colors, but if the fill is not 100%, you have the same problem as with the process colors.
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
There is a learning curve to working with the halftones and LPI settings as I explained in Post #5. You would do well to invest a few feet of materials and a couple of hours in testing the results of different settings. Otherwise you're trying to earn a return on your investment with one arm tied behind your back.
Listed below are settings that will get you started if you use Omega. The Gerbertone STC Photo halftone may not be available in older versions of Omega. It's main value is that it has LPI settings control that isn't available in other Gerbertone halftones.
My recommended default settings in Omega:
Vector Fills
Classical Dot Halftone
LPI = 53 for gradients
LPI = 70.7 for most solids
LPI = 90 for solids in mid to lighter shades
Raster Fills
Gerbertone STC Photo Halftone
LPI = 53 for gradients
LPI = 70.7 for most solids
LPI = 90 for solids in mid to lighter shades
Output Color Profile
Turn off automatic color management in GSPPlot and manually select the color profile named Gerber EDGE II 300 DPI CMYK.
natedawg9640
New Member
regardless, the result will always be "grainy", as it's printing 4 colors on top of one another in a dot matrix pattern. Then since the foils don't ever line up exactly on top of one another, you'll always see each of the cmyk colors if you look close enough. If the decal is to be viewed at close range, I use spot colors whenever possible.
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
I had the same feelings back in 1999 and finally, after watching customer after customer express no concerns over the halftone patterns, concluded that I was just suffering from perfectionism syndrome. This is not to discount the unacceptable results posted by the OP ... which would be much better if he followed my suggestions.
I make no claim that process prints from an Edge are as sharp as an inkjet. But the truth remains that any halftone image, as opposed to a continuous tone image, has a detectable pattern in it if you look closely. If reasonably well setup, however, Edge process prints serve their intended use very well when viewed from a distance greater than hand held distances.