Help with Matching Vinyl Print

[Decals Unltd]

I received a vinyl decal from a customer that wants us to reproduce it exactly, but I'm having a hard time matching the vibrancy on my machine (HP Latex 335 with Flexi software), especially the red. I've tried editing the image in Photoshop to make it more saturated but the print still comes out dull. The original wasn't printed at my shop so I don't know how it was produced. Any suggestions? Is there something I'm missing?

 

[flyplainsdrifta]

An exact reproduction is tough without getting deep into Color Management in the rip and printer. In any case, this seems more like it was printed on another machine, solvent, uv or otherwise. Nigh on impossible to get it exact without actually using the other printer. Not sure on Flexi, but in caldera we can make spot colors, run swatches and different versions of the red and picking which matches best and setting that as the color. Only tough part with this one in particular is they change in darkness throughout the image so you'd kinda just have to play around with rip color settings until you get what you want. Not ideal, but trying a bunch of swatches is normally how we'd do it.

 

[Decals Unltd]

An exact reproduction is tough without getting deep into Color Management in the rip and printer. In any case, this seems more like it was printed on another machine, solvent, uv or otherwise. Nigh on impossible to get it exact without actually using the other printer. Not sure on Flexi, but in caldera we can make spot colors, run swatches and different versions of the red and picking which matches best and setting that as the color. Only tough part with this one in particular is they change in darkness throughout the image so you'd kinda just have to play around with rip color settings until you get what you want. Not ideal, but trying a bunch of swatches is normally how we'd do it.

That's normally what I would do, too, but this is a raster image, and I don't have the capability to print rasters with spot colors. It's also much more vibrant than anything I have on my red swatches

 

[flyplainsdrifta]

Ahh gotcha. Yeah, ive noticed between our ecosol roland and the Latex's we have, the roland will always have the deeper vibrancy. We can get really close, but perfect match is usually out of the question between the two unless you go down the color rabbit hole. Could have something to do with the ink load laying down, key with latex is to play with the ink % and heat to find a balance to get a bit more vibrancy. Hard part is finding the limit and making sure the heaters can dry it. Sorry i couldnt be much more help.

 

[Decals Unltd]

Ahh gotcha. Yeah, ive noticed between our ecosol roland and the Latex's we have, the roland will always have the deeper vibrancy. We can get really close, but perfect match is usually out of the question between the two unless you go down the color rabbit hole. Could have something to do with the ink load laying down, key with latex is to play with the ink % and heat to find a balance to get a bit more vibrancy. Hard part is finding the limit and making sure the heaters can dry it. Sorry i couldnt be much more help.

This is very helpful, actually. I'm new to this and sometimes I can't tell when it's a lack of knowledge on my part vs. a limitation of the machine.

Do you know how to do that in Flexi/Production Manager? I found this graph, but I'm not sure if this does what you're talking about:

 

[flyplainsdrifta]

Im not entirely sure on flexi, we've only run caldera. But i think that window is where you'd want to be. Just dont forget to reset to your normal config after you play around, can cause havoc on your normal stuff. Either way though, im not sure if the L335 has the onboard spectro to do the on board profiling. Usually its a balance between those two procedures that can adjust stuff like density and vividness.

 

[bob]

Been there, done that.

Are you sending a CMYK file to your RIP? If so, this is most likely a large part of your problem. With bitmaps send RGB with Rendering Intents for bitmaps set to "No Color Correction" or, failing that, "Saturation". Your RIP can deal with RGB far better than any other software you might have. Set Dithering to the highest algorithm available to you. Doing these things should get you to as close to 'what you see is what you get' as you're likely to achieve without going through all manner of tedious color management, none of which is quick and easy nor certain.

 

[balstestrat]

You need a profile with high ink limit. Default 110 or whatever won't make it for you.
Lifting the ink limit will also give you wider gamut.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Been there, done that.

Are you sending a CMYK file to your RIP? If so, this is most likely a large part of your problem. With bitmaps send RGB with Rendering Intents for bitmaps set to "No Color Correction" or, failing that, "Saturation". Your RIP can deal with RGB far better than any other software you might have. Set Dithering to the highest algorithm available to you. Doing these things should get you to as close to 'what you see is what you get' as you're likely to achieve without going through all manner of tedious color management, none of which is quick and easy nor certain.

Does the RIP still use the ink limits when you turn the rendering intent to No Color Correction? In my experience with solvent printers, turning off color correction completely oversaturates to the point the ink is dripping off the vinyl.