Onyx Rip Issue

[serverjohn]

I feel like i have a little experience with color profiling... That being said I have recently been humbled. I'll give you a few for instances and maybe you could point out for me what I have missed because I feel like I am beating my head against a wall.

Here is want happens. I take a simple black square and give it a cmyk value of only 100% k. Then I bring it into the preflight program and do a sample point and instead of giving me a reading of 100% K in gives me 82.7% C 82.7% M 82.7% Y 100% K. This is cool if you want a really rich black but not so cool in other situations.

For instance when I want to make a burgany I punch in a value of C25 M100 Y100 K25. The rip software converts it to C58 M100 Y100 K0. which makes the color mucky.

I should mention that other colors come out fantastic like greys are great. It is just when I try to print anything with black in it. It is like it is trying to make black from the other colors instead of just using black.

Please help!

 

[J Hill Designs]

are you exporting as rgb? thats what it sounds like to me

 

[serverjohn]

I don't believe so. I use mostly adobe illustrator vector files set up as CMYK(file/color mode/cmyk) eps files.

 

[genericname]

If it applies, I'd shut off GCR and Black Point Compensation. Also, when creating a profile, I avoid the hell out of Advanced Gray Scale Linearization. Failing that, try setting the Black to print as a pure hue.

The only thing I could think of that would be messing with the Burgundy though, other than your profile being off, is a rendering intent. Either way, that would mess with the rest of your colours too. My first thought was that your Black Limit was set too low, what with it changing the K25 to 0, but that doesn't explain why it more than doubled the Cyan in the colour.

 

[MikePro]

choose the "All ICC PROFILES - OFF" option in your preflight?

edited: oops, i see what you mean. you want to print images as perceptual but still have the absolute color control for your spot colors? you should be able to adjust your settings in the first window of preflight. otherwise, my workaround as been to go to color correction before ripping and under tools there's a "color replacement" option to adjust the cmyk values of a selected color. careful, however, because it may pick out chunks of your image as well and give it a posterized look in those spots.

 

[serverjohn]

Alright you guys set me on a path...
I made a maroon square in photoshop. Color mode = CMYK. Saved as a jpeg. I opened it with preflight and got the same thing c58 100m 100y 0k. Then I shut off CGR and changed the CMYK Image to no profile and i get a reading of 25 100 100 25. Grr. Now to see what it prints!

 

[serverjohn]

The print turned out good looks like burgundy.

However I set up the same color square in illustrator and now nothing i do in the profiles section changes the ink levels. With no profiles selected and CGR turned off I still get the 58 100 100 0. Can you think of any reason why??

 

[genericname]

Make sure your color space settings are the same between Photoshop and Illustrator. Also, check your rendering intents again, as it can treat raster images differently than vectors.

Failing that, try a mixture of the previous settings (GCR off, but profiles on).

 

[serverjohn]

choose the "All ICC PROFILES - OFF" option in your preflight?

edited: oops, i see what you mean. you want to print images as perceptual but still have the absolute color control for your spot colors? you should be able to adjust your settings in the first window of preflight. otherwise, my workaround as been to go to color correction before ripping and under tools there's a "color replacement" option to adjust the cmyk values of a selected color. careful, however, because it may pick out chunks of your image as well and give it a posterized look in those spots.

As to your edit... I tried to get spot colors to work but had the same problem. Basically I want my colors to come out the same color as i want ie not adding in cyan when i just want a little black.

 

[serverjohn]

Some screen shots are attached.

The Rip1 one is showing my illustrator settings.

The Rip2 is showing my onyx settings. Without GCR.

The Rip3 is showing my onyx settings again but with the adobe profiles chosen for the imput. I closed the option box and did another sample point then opened the profiles box so you could see not change

Any ideas?

 

[Bly]

What you are seeing is colour management doing it's job.
The ICC profiles are converting the file input values to what they "should" be.

Unless you have custom profiles for your media things will probably look off.

Of course you can always use the colour replacement tool to alter the values of solids to what you want. Or turn off profiles altogether which opens another can of worms..

 

[serverjohn]

One thing i find extremely odd is that when I use illustrator turning off all profiles doesn't change a thing!

 

[serverjohn]

Does anyone know why that would happen(above post) and the numbers be different than the illustrator file?

 

[scott pagan]

in Onyx PreFlight>Color Managment>Change Profiles>Profiles>(CMYK or RGB) select the ICC Pure Hues icon to ensure pure hues of x color are rendered without any color correction. i use a CMYK workflow and want my 100% black to always be 100% black, i check the black pure hue checkbox and my ICC profile will properly color correct and not change the pure 100% black (as you experienced in your 1st post).

Bly is correct the difference between Illy and Onyx is the color correction doing it's job.

rendering intent plays a part too.

if you disable profiles in an illy cmyk document and disable icc profiling in onyx, the values should be the same (however, it's been awhile since i've tested this).

 

[signswi]

Alright you guys set me on a path...
I made a maroon square in photoshop. Color mode = CMYK. Saved as a jpeg. I opened it with preflight and got the same thing c58 100m 100y 0k. Then I shut off CGR and changed the CMYK Image to no profile and i get a reading of 25 100 100 25. Grr. Now to see what it prints!

JPG only supports RGB color modes. Use a PDF workflow or a EPS/TIFF workflow if you don't know PDF preflighting.

 

[eye4clr]

As Bly says, your color management is working well and doing its job. What you may not like is the results. If your output ICC profile, or Onyx's conversion calculator don't do a good job, you may get some funky output. This could be caused by not using a media model that exactly matches your system (most likely), bad measurements during the creation of the ICC, or the magic that Onyx applies when it converts color not being so magic.

For incoming 100K to convert to the "rich black" is normal and good in almost all circumstances. What I see as bad is the combined amount of ink it's calculating and the fact they are all equal numbers in the CMY. That's WAY more combined ink than you need to make a solid rich black. This is a setting in the ICC profile of the Media Model that was chosen by whoever made the profile. They simply chose a value for Total Ink that was much higher than it needs to be. In 18 years of color management I have NEVER seen CMY values be even in the creation of black unless it is a synthetic profile not created by spectral measurements. Looks like you're either fabricating the numbers for clarity in your explination or using a profile that wasn't created normally.

The swapping of K for C in your burgundy example is the same function of the Media Model and its ICC profile converting all incoming values to ones that should be working well based on your printer/ink/media/resolution. Swapping K for C in your case is a function of the Grey Component Replacement (GCR) performed by the ICC. How this works and how aggressively it applies GCR is a choice made by whoever made the ICC. In inkjet printing it is very common to suppress the use of K in favor of whatever ink can take it's place to hide the obvious K dot in lighter colors. This makes your prints look higher resolution than they really are by using ink colors that don't contrast as much. Then in darker colors, use K in favor of other inks to save ink and all that comes with that. In day to day printing, these are very good things assuming all the parts are performing well.

All of this is techno mumbo jumbo. What matters is what the print looks like. What doesn't matter so much are the exact numbers that get you there. It appears to me that your Media Model simply doesn't handle that burgundy well. It wouldn't surprise me to find that it's a fault of Onyx's color engine doing a poor conversion and producing funky output or it's using an ICC that was not based on real measurements.

BTW, jpeg can be RGB or CMYK.

 

[the graphics lab]

Wow, I have been fighting these issues for 3 years. My black, no matter what I set it to in Illustrator comes out to be 88 88 88 100. The ink is way too thick and our laminates show lifting lines. What Ive had to do is manually change ALL of our colors to specific spot color values I have created using the color replacement tab. All our colors are spot matched our resin ribbons. I understand colors changing slightly but the black is crazy. We use profiles created by the guys that set up the machine. Noone wanted to tell me the target values so I couldn't even make new profiles. I use one profile for every substrate and everything comes out great. I appreciate the information in this thread thanks.

 

[eye4clr]

My black, no matter what I set it to in Illustrator comes out to be 88 88 88 100

So you're saying if the file is 100k or 100/100/100/100 you get the 88/88/88/100 on the output? If so, sounds like some kind of specific color replacement is happening. Because that is certainly not normal behavior for a conventional ICC. A normal ICC would give you much lighter numbers from 100k input than 100/100/100/100 or 0/0/0 rgb.

Something is whacked in your blacks and maybe in your GCR.

Please don't tell me you use one profile for everything. It pains me. Simply using a different media profile may clear up this bizarre color mapping nonsense you have.

BTW, there are no "target values" when making a media profile. That is the stuff of density based color management when you're using SWOP colored inks. None of us use SWOP colored inks. Ours are almost universally better than SWOP and should be allowed to be.

I'm fascinated by what's happening here. Can you send me the ICC from the media profile? PM me.

 

[eye4clr]

my black for 3m180v3

avery 1005 ezrs

general formulations 201

Here are some examples of typical total ink black for several common materials I've made profiles for here in the shop.

 

[the graphics lab]

I just made two black boxes in Illustrator, one 100k, one at 100C 100M 100Y 100K and both came up 82.7C 82.7M 82.7Y 100K. I tried twice, one with Illustrator outputting all blacks as rich black, and all blacks accurately and got the same result.

I am using an Acuity 2504 HD with the KO inks. When I started, the profiles were already created by the ONYX team I guess, but no one here at my company knew how to profile. Our colors weren't coming out right so we do everything manually now. Just select the color and type in the values. I was told I needed a target or at least target densities to create profiles and I finally got some Fujifilm tech's file which listed target densities for the machine, but for the colorgate rip. I used those densities along with an EYE one to create a profile that wouldn't posterize my colors and stack my blacks when printing the occasional photo.

I appreciate your help with this.