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Printing "rich" red???

A

airsigns1

New Member
Hey guys, I am new to this forum, but I love all of the useful info I have found
here already. I have a question about printing red. I have a mutoh value jet 1304. I am using flexisign 8.6 pro. I have tried to print a really nice rich red, but not much luck. Every time I try to print a rich red, I usually get a tomato red or an orange red. I know that the icc profile I am using effects my printer output, but I don't know where I am going wrong. Does anyone have any ideas about how to fix this problem? Thanks.
 
Letterbox Mike

Letterbox Mike

New Member
We tend to get the richest red with c7/m100/y90/k5 or thereabouts. Setting your yellow to 100% will yield a slightly less rich red that leans to the orange side. Dropping it to 90 bumps the redness and adding in a bit of cyan and black increases the richness a little. Play around with it, depending on your printer and profile that may not necessarily be the right formula, but it works great for us.
 
Letterbox Mike

Letterbox Mike

New Member
Oh, welcome! My wife's whole family is from Monticello, I didn't even notice that! We were just down there for Thanksgiving.
 
ProWraps

ProWraps

New Member
it aint gonna happen. your mixing pink and yellow to get your red. welcome to the joys of a cmyk printer. color gammut and color theory are some things you should investigate.

understand how your rip/printer mix colors to interpret what you feed to them. once you understand how it works, you will absolutely know the limitations. GIGO is the rule, WYSIWYG isnt applicable.

you can print red, but you will never get a RED red.

have yourself some fun and go try to print some greys :ROFLMAO:
 
JoshLoring

JoshLoring

New Member
ProWraps said:
you can print red, but you will never get a RED red.
Click to expand...

^^^
What he said :)
Don't care what ANYONE says. Print ANY red and get it up by a nice red car and look how you thought that pretty red is now muddy red.
This will never change... Or, you buy yourself an 8 color large format with orange and red.
 
TyrantDesigner

TyrantDesigner

Art! Hot and fresh.
JoshLoring said:
^^^
What he said :)
Don't care what ANYONE says. Print ANY red and get it up by a nice red car and look how you thought that pretty red is now muddy red.
This will never change... Or, you buy yourself an 8 color large format with orange and red.
Click to expand...

Well ... you could get a machine that does spot colors (for white or flourescent, etc) and just switch it out with a red ... sadly that is not an ideal situation. Might as well just find a red that you think is the closest to a pure red and not a secondary based red and go with the flow. Pretty much the only colors that are truly hard to come up to look good are purples (not burple or violet ... true purple), primary red, lime green and a golden color that doesn't want to look orange or green. Just the limitations of the material. If the design doesn't have a massive area of red and you just need a few spot areas where it is needed ... just print with the area blacked out and apply a spot color in cut vinyl over it after it is laminated if your customer truly wants the brightest most primary red he can get.
 
bob

bob

It's better to have two hands than one glove.
airsigns1 said:
Hey guys, I am new to this forum, but I love all of the useful info I have found
here already. I have a question about printing red. I have a mutoh value jet 1304. I am using flexisign 8.6 pro. I have tried to print a really nice rich red, but not much luck. Every time I try to print a rich red, I usually get a tomato red or an orange red. I know that the icc profile I am using effects my printer output, but I don't know where I am going wrong. Does anyone have any ideas about how to fix this problem? Thanks.
Click to expand...

What are your rendering intents?
 
Custom_Grafx

Custom_Grafx

New Member
I can get a very good red on my 4 colour CMYK actually. I find that anything "vibrant", red being one of those colours that looks more "red" when it's vibrant, you really really really need a material that has a good white point. The white needs to be bright white. We often tend to forget I think, that inks are translucent. You are not just mixing yellow and magenta. You are mixing yellow, magenta, and white. If your white is off white, forget any vibrant colours. It's like adding off white to a primary colour if you're mixing paint. Your yellow will be muddy, as well as your reds, greens etc.

The only colour which has a significant degree of opacity I find, is black. All the rest, are pretty much transparent so you're wasting time if your material sux basically.

Also, if your RIP has the option to output colour charts, do so.
 
MikePro

MikePro

New Member
welcome to the forum
looks like you have color management issues, I print awesome reds in variations of Magenta and Yellow %'s... sometimes black and cyan for deeper colors.

a quick fix is to print a cmyk color chart with icc profiles turned off and pick a red that you like, input those values in your rip and you're set! next step is figuring out color profiling so you can just design, rip, and print without the headache of hoping your colors come out the way you want.
 
J

jmcnicoll

New Member
Play with the mix a little. Start with 100M and 80Y. You may find you need more or less yellow, maybe a touch of Cyan and or black also. Depends on your media, printer, profile, inks and so on.

jim
 
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