PANTONE COLOR ISSUE - ONYX THRIVE AND EPSON

[Station51Graphics]

Hi all, our shop is running an Epson S80600L with Onyx Thrive v21 as our RIP software.
Just over a month ago, we were printing dead-on Pantone swatches.
Now that the time has come to produce a full set of vehicle graphics, our output colors are different.
Same printer, software, settings, and files, with a completely different result.

See the attached photo (we are printing on reflective vinyl, so the picture is far-off from what the naked eye sees.)
The top swatch is what we want, but the bottom is what we are getting.

The biggest problem: I can't find any issues with the printer, or any settings that changed. What gives?

 

[Solventinkjet]

All printers drift over time, especially in mid tones and grays. You need to re-linearize using a spectro to get consistent color over time. That is a fair amount of drift for a month though. If the printer's environment changed a lot in that time it could explain it. Or even if you switched from OEM to 3rd party inks. Maybe you used a different profile for the original?

 

[Station51Graphics]

Same environment (73 degree controlled room). The color is consistent (but wrong) on different media.
The only inks we use are the official Epson products through our supplier.

I cannot find any changes within Onyx that would have caused this. Again, running the same file with the same settings now has me this far off!

 

[Solventinkjet]

That sounds like a drift/linearization problem then. What I mean by consistent is, consistent over time, not necessarily between medias. So, while everything is exactly the same, what's changed is the output of your printheads over time which is what linearization fixes. It's something that printer dealers don't often educate people on because they want to sell a turnkey, hit print and walk away experience. The reality is that, in order to hit consistent color over time, you have to linearize periodically. Otherwise, you get color drift like this. If you don't have a spectro, the best you can do to solve this is mess with the CMYK values or play around with the color curves in Onyx.

 

[Boudica]

in Onyx you can change a specific color in the color correction area. It's a few steps in..... Under Job Editor, select Color Correction -> Tools -> Color Replacements -> Use the eye dropper tool to select the color in the artwork you want to change. Then under "Desired Color" Click on "Import Named Color". in there you can type in the pantone color you want. It will change the color you selected in the artwork. It works well for me, and the epson hit's the color dead on when I do this.

 

[scum idaho]

Greetings!
Aside from the other issues people have brought up, I'd like to say a couple of things I've noticed on my Epson (same model and using Onyx thrive also) when printing.

First is making sure that your Pantone color is properly tagged. I'll have people just name a color and set it to spot, but thrive doesn't recognize it as the official Pantone color so it doesn't really know how to correct it to what I expect. That would be my first thing to check. I'm not the only designer in the shop so this happens Semi-regularly, especially because we don't subscribe to Pantone and just type in names. Kind of hacky but it's the truth.

Second - do you use quick sets? I do and I flip the color profiles in them sometimes and forget to change them back. I'm often trying to match colors from the production guy 5 years ago and he left it set on 3M match print, but now I like to use European colorful. So sometimes I might forget to switch back because maybe I have ADD or something.

Other people are probably right on linearizing, and controlling more factors, but I thought I might give you a couple of items you could try sooner that I've noticed too.

 

[Boudica]

Greetings!
Aside from the other issues people have brought up, I'd like to say a couple of things I've noticed on my Epson (same model and using Onyx thrive also) when printing.

First is making sure that your Pantone color is properly tagged. I'll have people just name a color and set it to spot, but thrive doesn't recognize it as the official Pantone color so it doesn't really know how to correct it to what I expect. That would be my first thing to check. I'm not the only designer in the shop so this happens Semi-regularly, especially because we don't subscribe to Pantone and just type in names. Kind of hacky but it's the truth.

Second - do you use quick sets? I do and I flip the color profiles in them sometimes and forget to change them back. I'm often trying to match colors from the production guy 5 years ago and he left it set on 3M match print, but now I like to use European colorful. So sometimes I might forget to switch back because maybe I have ADD or something.

Other people are probably right on linearizing, and controlling more factors, but I thought I might give you a couple of items you could try sooner that I've noticed too.

Welcome to the forum. Interesting member name. What part of Idaho makes you feel scummy? Are you in the pan handle, or the big dry part?

 

[cornholio]

Are all channels printing perfectly?
Piezo heads don't drift that quickly from my experience.(30years and all kinds of head makes...)