RIP Software Change ? Running 5x HP Latex 3xx Series

[J4cko]

Hi Guys,
Couple of questions please :

We are looking to get some better consistency between our HP Latex L3xx machines.
we run 5 machines, moderate use, but struggle with consistency between the colour on all five.
We think something was configured incorrectly to start with, when we set our machines up with Onyx, and cloned and shared profiles etc.

We dont profess to knowing as much as we should about colour, profiling etc.
Our stack is :
5x L3xx series Latex printers
Onyx Production House RIP
i1iO Robotic Spectro X-Rite

We only really print on one media type, for 95% of our work

We know that when we clone a generic profile, and set them all the same density, and media settings, and run a test print from the control panel of the HP 3xx machines,
That the test prints come out pretty similar

However, when we do test prints via our Onyx Production House, we get varied results, with the same habit of certain machines leaning towards certain colours, irrespective of if all machines had brand new heads.
So something is wrong somewhere, in relation to how we have set up our RIP, our profile, our calibration, and how we have shared / cloned profiles.

What i would like, is a recommendation of anyone who knows :
HP Latex machines
Onyx RIPs
i1i0 Robotic Spectro X-Rite
Colour profiles, and Colour Management
We only use 1x print media, for 95% of our work, so only need the profile for this

We know we can find an engineer, or a colour specialist, but usually, they know some but not all, and maybe that why we are in this position.

On a side note, once distributor we contacted, suggesting moving to GMG / PrintFactory ?
Any views on this welcomed ( we are not keen to change ! )

And any recommendations of a genius, that knows i1 spectro, Colour management , calibration, and profiling, Onyx RIPs, and HP Latex !

thanks a lot
Jack

 

[balstestrat]

The most important thing is you make one profile on one machine with new printheads and then copy that OMS over to the others.

After that you just keep doing color calibration every week on every machine and replace printheads if any issues arise or usage goes well over 5L.

In Onyx you just have same color settings for every unit and that's it on that end.

 

[J4cko]

Thanks Balstestrat
Any reason why a distributor would suggest switching RIPs to GMG PrintFactory ?( apart from comission ! )

 

[balstestrat]

Related to just this issue there is no reason to switch RIP.

 

[J4cko]

Even though i've been printing for years, and am reasonably technical, i may want a bit of hand holding to be on the right track with this. ( do you or are you willing to do an extended zoom / teams, Teamviewer training session remotely !? I am not concerned so much about what the rate is, just about getting better consistency ) I am also wary of breaking our existing set up, as inconsistent as it is, we manage to get away with the inconsitencies by sending different colour jobs, to different machines, and as bad as it sounds, we make do. or are at least familiar. Whereas wiping the slate, means we have no idea which machine leans towards which way ...if any ! )

 

[jcskikus]

One note: the 3XX HP's are known, as many HP's previous to the 700 models, to have color inconsistencies, especially with the color blue.

 

[Christian @ Visual Graphx]

There are a ton reasons to switch to Printfactory; Better color, less ink, more consistency, heck even the ability to clone the profile and rebalance on each machine with out affecting the original profile. In Onyx you are stuck reprofiling everything separately (even if you clone them over) and linearizing runs the risk of corruption.

If you dont want to switch, I highly recommend you use XRites profiling software, its heads and tails above Onyx when it comes to color quality and ink usage. Just build the media profile in Onyx and then use XRite to generate the ICC.

 

[J4cko]

Hi guys, thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.

Christian @ Visual Graphx Really appreciate the heads up on PrintFactory.
( I trust what you say, as i have read your posts for many years ( was it 2CT ? originally ) )

I've been printing large format for 20 years, but my main technical guy who dealt with all the tricky stuff, and took a whole lot of the strain, passed away suddenly 4 years ago.
It means things like scripts, software, systems, RIPs, Profiling , Medias etc, etc, have all dropped on my door !

The guy who recommended the PrintFactory, is a guy i know pretty well,
but he is also a sales director...so selling is his bread and butter ! as thats how he makes his money.

I didn't distrust what he said, its more the learning curve of transition from Onyx to PrintFactory,
and associated up front cost, that i wasn't too keen on at present, as we are in a period of re-building after 3 very poor years,
so i need to look at costs and time on everything nowadays.

Apologies for my naivety on the subject of profiling and media, and i wish i could just nod at phrases like :
"build the media profile in Onyx", and then use "X-Rite to Generate the ICC".

I sort of understand, but i am using ChatGPT to iron out a lot of gaps at present !!
Thankfully it has produced me 2x docs, after a little back and forth.

Do you have any links to anything on Youtube, that explains similar ? or any other resource that you would trust for info ( apart from here ! from people like your good self ! )

I wish all this was ABC to me, but its not. I am sure i can get my head around it, but like anything, its always a struggle with even the terminology at first

Thanks again, much appreciated

 

[dypinc]

There are a ton reasons to switch to Printfactory; Better color, less ink, more consistency, heck even the ability to clone the profile and rebalance on each machine with out affecting the original profile. In Onyx you are stuck reprofiling everything separately (even if you clone them over) and linearizing runs the risk of corruption.

If you dont want to switch, I highly recommend you use XRites profiling software, its heads and tails above Onyx when it comes to color quality and ink usage. Just build the media profile in Onyx and then use XRite to generate the ICC.

If you do try Printfactory be sure and test if they have fixed the inability to print pure primaries. Very necessary if want good blacks with HP Latex. Also when I tested it there was no way to proof this either in the program or by creating a tif preview.

 

[Pauly]

No need to change RIPs.

As mentioned.

Calibrate ALL Printers separately.
in onyx, get their gold onyx advantage. it has colour checker, which means you can compare printers and compare prints after each week for any colour drift. if you do, you can re linearise the profile and check again.

 

[Christian @ Visual Graphx]

Hi guys, thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.

Christian @ Visual Graphx Really appreciate the heads up on PrintFactory.
( I trust what you say, as i have read your posts for many years ( was it 2CT ? originally ) )

I've been printing large format for 20 years, but my main technical guy who dealt with all the tricky stuff, and took a whole lot of the strain, passed away suddenly 4 years ago.
It means things like scripts, software, systems, RIPs, Profiling , Medias etc, etc, have all dropped on my door !

The guy who recommended the PrintFactory, is a guy i know pretty well,
but he is also a sales director...so selling is his bread and butter ! as thats how he makes his money.

I didn't distrust what he said, its more the learning curve of transition from Onyx to PrintFactory,
and associated up front cost, that i wasn't too keen on at present, as we are in a period of re-building after 3 very poor years,
so i need to look at costs and time on everything nowadays.

Apologies for my naivety on the subject of profiling and media, and i wish i could just nod at phrases like :
"build the media profile in Onyx", and then use "X-Rite to Generate the ICC".

I sort of understand, but i am using ChatGPT to iron out a lot of gaps at present !!
Thankfully it has produced me 2x docs, after a little back and forth.

Do you have any links to anything on Youtube, that explains similar ? or any other resource that you would trust for info ( apart from here ! from people like your good self ! )

I wish all this was ABC to me, but its not. I am sure i can get my head around it, but like anything, its always a struggle with even the terminology at first

Thanks again, much appreciated

Yes, formally 2CT, recently merged into Visual Graphx.

Shoot me an email: christian@visualgraphx.com and I can setup something with you to walk through some options to help you through this. The good thing is you primarily only use one media so that makes it easier. I can also show you printfactory in comparison too.

 

[J4cko]

If you do try Printfactory be sure and test if they have fixed the inability to print pure primaries. Very necessary if want good blacks with HP Latex. Also when I tested it there was no way to proof this either in the program or by creating a tif preview.

Hi dypinc , thanks for the detail on this, i'm always keen to learn, so thank you. We print artwork for home decor mostly, and our issues are mostly with neutrals, but we would def want to be able to print good blacks, espeically for B&W images. We dont and never have done spot colour matching , or looking to hit primaries, so not 100% sure whether this would affect us or not. But i would def want to test that we get decent colours, even if we dont quite get the true primaries.

 

[J4cko]

Hi Guys, thanks for all of your input, greatly appreciated. I am confident we can improve on the colour, with assistence from guys like yourself, and some good resources for videos and "how to's" . Our end goal in achieving better colour, is also in line with us being easily able to maintain consistent colour. So any look to move to a new RIP such as PrintFactory, would also be influenced by how easy it was to have quick regular checks and tests to maintain consistency. The first goal is to get the colour more consistent across the 5 devices. Not perfect, but hopefully alot better than what we currently acheive. This is a MUSt for us. The next thing then, is finding the easiest way, or the best software that makes it easiest for us to maintain this consistency. So worth knowing, if all things are good enough across the 5 devices on the colour.....which is the best RIP or stack to help us maintain this consistency the easiest ? is it Onyx ? is it PrintFactory, or is there a better solution for getting consistent colour, and also giving us the easiest way to maintain this across the 5 machines ?

 

[dypinc]

Hi dypinc , thanks for the detail on this, i'm always keen to learn, so thank you. We print artwork for home decor mostly, and our issues are mostly with neutrals, but we would def want to be able to print good blacks, espeically for B&W images. We dont and never have done spot colour matching , or looking to hit primaries, so not 100% sure whether this would affect us or not. But i would def want to test that we get decent colours, even if we dont quite get the true primaries.

B&W images I would think you want to do grayscale and then create your ICC profile setting your black start and GCR to minimize graininess. Solid black on the other hand need 100 pure black outputted from the printer. Turning off CM is one way to do it, but you loose CM for all colors that way. That is why most RIP allow you to override CM for pure primaries. When I tested Printfactory it showed that function but it did not work. I pointed that out to them and they would never give me an answer or how I could preview the output values. I have been bringing this up constantly and as of this date not one Printfactory tech to fanboy has responded to this glaring defect. Anyone looking at getting Printfactory really needs to test this before purchasing to see if this was corrected.

 

[Pauly]

I would stick with Onyx. You won't solve any issue you're having by moving to print factory.

HP's are one of the hardest printers to keep consistent due to their heads wearing out over time. My first thing would be moving away from 5 hps and move to 2x latex 800s or 1x Colorado.
Running 1 printer is a lot cheaper than 5.

Onyx has tools as I mentioned to assist with colour consistently. It is under their maintenance subscription model with a few other features but if you change rips you're also buying 5 more licences.