Profiling Versaworks 4

[Riku Salonen]

Hi,
Does any one knows is it possible to make my own profiles to versaworks 4 with 3rd party color profiling software?

Meaning that when i go to media explorer and create new media, there are always some icc. profile at backround.. I want to start profiling from "clean table"

 

[jasonx]

Do your individual ink limits and total ink limits. Then print off the test chart from the software your using. Build the icc in that software then apply it to the profile you created in versa works.

Versaworks itself can't build icc profiles.

 

[jasonx]

http://support.rolanddga.com/docs/D.../Manuals and Guides/VersaWorks3_Profiling.pdf

 

[lephot]

Hi,

The document from Roland is well made.. however to my point of view there is one important point missing which is how to do the CMYK ink restriction.
This is important to achieve the best possible colors and save a lot of Ink !

Here is one possible procedure :
- First print CMYK ramp going from 0 to 100 without any color correction.
- Secondly using measure tools you mesure the densities of each color.
Personnaly I use the following ones
M : 1.70 to 1.75 Not always easy to achieve if your media is of poor quality as the roland M ink is not very dense
C : 1.8 to 1.9
Y : 1.4 to 1.5 it should normally be close the C
K : 2.1 to 2.2

this should give you something like
M : 95 %
C : 70 %
Y : 75 %
K : 65 %

After having done this you can carry on with what is indicated in the roland profiling procedure !

 

[jasonx]

Hi,

The document from Roland is well made.. however to my point of view there is one important point missing which is how to do the CMYK ink restriction.
This is important to achieve the best possible colors and save a lot of Ink !

Here is one possible procedure :
- First print CMYK ramp going from 0 to 100 without any color correction.
- Secondly using measure tools you mesure the densities of each color.
Personnaly I use the following ones
M : 1.70 to 1.75 Not always easy to achieve if your media is of poor quality as the roland M ink is not very dense
C : 1.8 to 1.9
Y : 1.4 to 1.5 it should normally be close the C
K : 2.1 to 2.2

this should give you something like
M : 95 %
C : 70 %
Y : 75 %
K : 65 %

After having done this you can carry on with what is indicated in the roland profiling procedure !

Is this for the individual or the total ink limit?

What software are you using to do the measurement to get the densities?

This is always the part I have struggled with.

 

[lephot]

Yes this is individual ink limits.

I'm using measure tools set up as follows
- Use point mesurement and then click density
- Use standard DIN
- Auto CMYK
- Paper white

concerning total ink limit, you can use the supplied chart from versawork which is fine.
Once having done correctly you individual ink limits, linearization the total ink limits should be around 200 %
Do not go to low, you would get poor results when making your ICC profile as the total gamut would not be reached !

 

[lephot]

Hi pat ....
Yes if you take the generic profiles supplied by Roland they use much to much ink ...
With my procedure I spare roughly 30% on ink consumption.
For the price we pay the cartridges here in France it makes a lot !

 

[Custom_Grafx]

I'd like to ressurect this thread, as I don't want to hijack Colin's thread about printing greys with VW.

I'll paste the URL though, coz it's good reading and relevant.
http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89539

What I'm really curious about is the above comment by lephot;

****************************************
Hi,

The document from Roland is well made.. however to my point of view there is one important point missing which is how to do the CMYK ink restriction.
This is important to achieve the best possible colors and save a lot of Ink !

Here is one possible procedure :
- First print CMYK ramp going from 0 to 100 without any color correction.
- Secondly using measure tools you mesure the densities of each color.
Personnaly I use the following ones
M : 1.70 to 1.75 Not always easy to achieve if your media is of poor quality as the roland M ink is not very dense
C : 1.8 to 1.9
Y : 1.4 to 1.5 it should normally be close the C
K : 2.1 to 2.2

this should give you something like
M : 95 %
C : 70 %
Y : 75 %
K : 65 %

After having done this you can carry on with what is indicated in the roland profiling procedure !
****************************************

I want to know why the above numbers? I know where to look for them in VW - I believe it's referring to the "T" value in the individual ink restrictions section of the Roland VW profiling procedure.

I really want to know how we're supposed to know what % to make these individual inks. As this is the first step in creating a profile, it's obviously pretty important, as everything else in the process would be directly affected by these settings.

Someone help? Please!?!

 

[eye4clr]

I'm comfortable dong ink restrictions with the ProfileMaker tools I have. But if VW will allow you read individual measurements, and allow you to choose density as the measurement mode, does it also allow you to choose LCH instead of density?

If so, I've got a fool proof method to optimize the restrictions.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Versaworks profiling procedure summary the way I was taught/learnt from self study, using my equipment and procedures...

1) set everything in CP-001.jpg to 100%, and print a lin. chart.

2) examine the chart, and try to manually judge where the colour doesn't change, and change it to this value. For example, if you see that anything past 90% looks the same, then set that colour to 90%. Do this for each colour/channel.

3) reprint the chart, and proceed to CP-002.jpg

4) measure the chart with your spectro, and proceed to CP-003.jpg

5) examine the curves for each colour. if you notice any spikes or irregularities, manually adjust the peaks so that you have a smooth curve. roland warns that excessive adjustment is not desirable, so if your curve is really bad, then they recommend to re-print/read the chart from step 1-4 above.

6) after adjusting all your curves for each channel, you proceed to CP-004.jpg

7) you print out the total ink limit chart

8) examine the chart, and choose a total ink limit % which shows acceptable coverage, but does not bleed/run or is too wet. For me, this usually ends up being around 210-250% depending on the material

9) set your total ink limit

10) from i1 match (my profiling software), I generate 4 pages of colour patches, and send to versaworks. I change my settings in versaworks to "density control only" using the newly created media profile/linearization created in the above steps.

11) after printing, I measure the charts with my i1, with the i1 match software.

12) i1 match generates the icc

13) I go back into versaworks and assign the newly created icc to the media profile.

I'm more than happy with all the steps above, EXCEPT for step 2. I'm just not confident about what values I should be choosing, and after watching the roland webinar the other day I'm more confused... as it says you should try to "balance" these values, but there are no good instructions on how one should do that... they tried to explain printing grey and manually judging... however I think that they screwed up the instruction... anyway, I'm confused!

I don't know what you mean by "can you choose density as the measurement mode"... it just gives you the values "LABT" as you can see.

When you click on each square from 10-100 it does show you the value for that square in the values to the right, if that helps.

Let me know if anything is unclear - really appreciate any help!

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Bump

 

[Bly]

Eye4clr is the man on this topic - restricting inks by chroma will save you ink and money while still maximising gamut.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Thanks Bly,

We're talking about the Linearisation step yeah? In my current workflow, this is done in VW. When you say I should restrict inks by chroma, does this mean it can't be done in VW?

The Lin. procedure in VW is as posted above... you print out your inks at 100%, and choose the % that "looks best to you" (I mean... what does that mean?), then reprint after adjusting the limits, and re-reading, then "smoothing out" the curves.

Is it impossible with VW to achieve a good linearisation?

 

[jasonx]

Thanks Bly,

We're talking about the Linearisation step yeah? In my current workflow, this is done in VW. When you say I should restrict inks by chroma, does this mean it can't be done in VW?

The Lin. procedure in VW is as posted above... you print out your inks at 100%, and choose the % that "looks best to you" (I mean... what does that mean?), then reprint after adjusting the limits, and re-reading, then "smoothing out" the curves.

Is it impossible with VW to achieve a good linearisation?

How I did it is in Profile maker just print your individual ink limits chart and measure the first patch then measure the next and see the Delta E I think it is called. My understanding is this is the difference in the colour from one to the other. You keep scanning and you get to a point where you measure for example 85% and 90% and there is no difference to Delta E which means this is the sweet spot. Set the ink limit for that colour to 85%.

That's my lay man explanation of it and I probably have some terms muddled up.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

How I did it is in Profile maker just print your individual ink limits chart and measure the first patch then measure the next and see the Delta E I think it is called. My understanding is this is the difference in the colour from one to the other. You keep scanning and you get to a point where you measure for example 85% and 90% and there is no difference to Delta E which means this is the sweet spot. Set the ink limit for that colour to 85%.

That's my lay man explanation of it and I probably have some terms muddled up.

Thanks mate that makes more sense to me than "pick the best %". The T value in VW... seems to be some sort of a density value... I'm guessing a small change in that will also indicate a low delta E variance, therefore to limit it there?

 

[P Wagner]

When you say I should restrict inks by chroma, does this mean it can't be done in VW?

Is it impossible with VW to achieve a good linearisation?

Regarding the first point, no Versaworks does not provide LCh values for spot reads. As you mentioned that you are using i1Match, and not ProfileMaker, your current software lacks the ability to generate LCh information. The good news is that you should not need to puchase any additional software. Unless things have changed, you can simply go to XRite's web site, download and install the ProfileMaker suite of applications, and once installed, use the Measure Tool application (part of ProfileMaker) without needing any dongles or license keys. From there, you can take LCh measurements from the ramps, and determing Chroma-based values for your primary ink channels and then plug them into Versaworks and go forward with confidence that you are maximizing gamut without wasting ink.

Re the second question (linearization), yes Versaworks can generate perfectly good linearizations, but this step follows the primary ink limiting that we were discussing in the paragraph above.

 

[jasonx]

I'm not sure what those values mean in Versaworks. Bly and Eye4Clear explains the Delta E thing to me. I always got stuck just like yourself and people I spoke to about it in person just said "use your eye and see where the colour doesn't change".

You want the point where the colour doesn't change so you set the individual ink limit and you have a smooth ramp from 0 to 100 for that colour.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Regarding the first point, no Versaworks does not provide LCh values for spot reads. As you mentioned that you are using i1Match, and not ProfileMaker, your current software lacks the ability to generate LCh information. The good news is that you should not need to puchase any additional software. Unless things have changed, you can simply go to XRite's web site, download and install the ProfileMaker suite of applications, and once installed, use the Measure Tool application (part of ProfileMaker) without needing any dongles or license keys. From there, you can take LCh measurements from the ramps, and determing Chroma-based values for your primary ink channels and then plug them into Versaworks and go forward with confidence that you are maximizing gamut without wasting ink.

Re the second question (linearization), yes Versaworks can generate perfectly good linearizations, but this step follows the primary ink limiting that we were discussing in the paragraph above.

Thanks Castek,

I'll look into what I can d/l to measure... there was a software that came bundled, called i1 share... which measured spot colours, however this doesn't seem to work for me on my new Win7/64 machine. (I remember it worked on my xp).

My i1 is a i1extreme/uvcut (discontinued according to the xrite site).

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Ok, I got i1 share to work on my W7 machine

This is what I can see when I "evaluate" 2 colours.

I don't see anything like Lch... is this info in my screenshot NOT what I'm looking for?

Cheers!

 

[P Wagner]

I'll look into what I can d/l to measure... there was a software that came bundled, called i1 share... which measured spot colours, however this doesn't seem to work for me on my new Win7/64 machine. (I remember it worked on my xp).

My i1 is a i1extreme/uvcut (discontinued according to the xrite site).

i1Share cannot provide LCh measurement values, but you can run it on your Win7-64 installation.

Simply copy the eyeone.dll file from your i1Match installation folder and copy it into your i1Share folder (overwrite the one that is alreayy there (from 2005), and replace it with the newer one (dated 2007 as I recall), and you can use the i1Share app just as you used to in XP.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

i1Share cannot provide LCh measurement values, but you can run it on your Win7-64 installation.

Simply copy the eyeone.dll file from your i1Match installation folder and copy it into your i1Share folder (overwrite the one that is alreayy there (from 2005), and replace it with the newer one (dated 2007 as I recall), and you can use the i1Share app just as you used to in XP.

Thanks that's exactly how I got it to work - it came up in a google search in another forum!