Need Help ICC profile for subsurface printing

[JFoerg]

We print mostly on matte clear acrylic. We print reverse on the backside (glossy - aka "second surface"). We have a Xrite photo spectrometer and our profile for first surface prints works well. We tried creating a profile reading through acrylic for second surface prints and the results are not good.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[cstone94]

We print mostly on matte clear acrylic. We print reverse on the backside (glossy - aka "second surface"). We have a Xrite photo spectrometer and our profile for first surface prints works well. We tried creating a profile reading through acrylic for second surface prints and the results are not good.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Who manufactures the acrylic? See if they offer the same material but in 0.20 or .060. Although, I print about 20 sheets of acrylic per week and the standard profiles have achieved perfect results. If a certain pantone is off, I just print an "atlas" and create spot colors.

 

[chinaski]

Your getting bad results due to light refraction from your material. What you think you're measuring isn't going to be properly reflected back to you through your material. I've tested subsurface glass/acrylic of various thickness and accuracy is directly proportional to thickness. So as previous poster mentioned, if you must profile this way, use as thin of material as possible. Most likely you will find your swatches are measuring much darker than actuality.

Are you using any white ink behind colors? My most accurate acrylic profile is from measuring with heavy white ink directly on surface of any material.

If you are not using white ink, a transmissive spectro could be useful (probably not worth it). You will want to use a higher ink limit since your colors are not going to be reflected very well without white ink. Your spectro isn't just measuring through the acrylic to the inks but also, since inks are translucent, whatever is under the ink. If it's a white piece of paper, then your are effectively making a reflective profile.

 

[JFoerg]

Who manufactures the acrylic? See if they offer the same material but in 0.20 or .060. Although, I print about 20 sheets of acrylic per week and the standard profiles have achieved perfect results. If a certain pantone is off, I just print an "atlas" and create spot colors.

Thanks

 

[JFoerg]

Your getting bad results due to light refraction from your material. What you think you're measuring isn't going to be properly reflected back to you through your material. I've tested subsurface glass/acrylic of various thickness and accuracy is directly proportional to thickness. So as previous poster mentioned, if you must profile this way, use as thin of material as possible. Most likely you will find your swatches are measuring much darker than actuality.

Are you using any white ink behind colors? My most accurate acrylic profile is from measuring with heavy white ink directly on surface of any material.

If you are not using white ink, a transmissive spectro could be useful (probably not worth it). You will want to use a higher ink limit since your colors are not going to be reflected very well without white ink. Your spectro isn't just measuring through the acrylic to the inks but also, since inks are translucent, whatever is under the ink. If it's a white piece of paper, then your are effectively making a reflective profile.

Thanks, we have heard that the thinner the material the better the profile. Problem is, there isn't any thinner material than .060 available. We are thinking we could use .020 polycarbonate instead of .060 acrylic. Not sure if the difference between polycarb and acrylic is going to skew the results.
Your thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[chinaski]

Any clear material that thin will give very similar measurement readouts. The thicker the material, the darker (and less accurate) your measurements will be. Regardless, I've never had good results from doing this.

I'm guessing one of your first surface profiles (maybe glossy paper) will be a better match than whatever a second surface profile can produce. Just measure a few spot colors before you commit to making a profile. Trial-and-error can only help you understand more intuitively.

What I do:
I print first surface onto glass (any thickness) with a moderate amount of white ink underlaying the swatches. Since even heavy white ink is never 100% opaque, the glass underneath is going to impart color (somewhat greenish) as well as "eat" some of the luminosity. This is exactly what I want because acrylic and more-so glass skew greenish. Any image behind glass/acrylic will be darker, hence why lower luminosity is desirable, whereas glossy paper will be over 90 luminosity. In my case, my white point is L:89,3; a:-1,8; b:-2,1 while my black point is more robust with L:9,7. With this profile I do exhibition work on acrylic with no need for color correction. Also using X-rite spectrophotometer.

 

[JFoerg]

That is a very helpful answer, thank you very much. Will try it out and see what happens.