Smooth Grays ?

[SSIPRINT]

How can I get this Gray to print smooth? I am printing bi-directional at High-Quality.

Using Corel Draw - Roland Versaworks - Roland LEC-330.

Thank you

 

[rjssigns]

Some colors are hard to hit. That gray may be at the limit of the printers capabilities.

 

[Bobby H]

A gray color that is really a CMYK mix may print more smoothly than a gray that is made up only with black ink.

 

[Johnny Best]

I use Adobe Illustrator and RGB with pantone 419C and run down the opacity down to 60% to get that gray and save as a .pdf. The lower the opacity the lighter the gray, the higher it goes the darker.

 

[highrolling24]

I dont have that printer but to me the way it looks speckled looks like it is drying too fast and doesnt have time to flow out, gray is a very light color and doesnt need much ink so will dry alot faster than like a black.
Just my two cents and wouldnt cost anything to try, just turn the heaters down just a little and see what it does.

 

[phototec]

I think he's already using a cmyk mix vs percentage of black. At least on the hp, 90% black is already a bronze vs a grey.
Go into corel, pick every flavor of grey you like, print a mess of samples, and see which one is at least the 'smoothest'. You can lighten up the percentage like Johnny recommended to hit the tone you're after, but I'd start by trying to hit a decent coverage of grey.

When you say "You can lighten up the percentage", is that in the RIP or in Illustrator or Corel?

 

[chinaski]

Is there a way to align head height so that Bi-dir is printing more accurately? A quick workaround is to print in Uni-dir and if there is a major difference, then your head height is out of alignment.

Also, don't print pure black; Rich black will look smoother.

 

[SSIPRINT]

I dont have that printer but to me the way it looks speckled looks like it is drying too fast and doesnt have time to flow out, gray is a very light color and doesnt need much ink so will dry alot faster than like a black.
Just my two cents and wouldnt cost anything to try, just turn the heaters down just a little and see what it does.

I had the same thought, being that the ink needed to flow more. However this is a UV ink, I don't know if there is much leeway in adjusting the curing process.

 

[SSIPRINT]

Is there a way to align head height so that Bi-dir is printing more accurately? A quick workaround is to print in Uni-dir and if there is a major difference, then your head height is out of alignment.

Also, don't print pure black; Rich black will look smoother.

I am running a bi-directional test then going to adjust. I had it dialed in to created awesome prints just a week ago until I had an issue with yellow starvation, spent the past two days learning how to fix that. Now I have this textured/modeling issue and my yellow saturation is way too high (easier to see on a diff test print). Its been a long week.

 

[SSIPRINT]

When you say "You can lighten up the percentage", is that in the RIP or in Illustrator or Corel?

Ripping it in Roland Versaworks.

 

[Lindsey]

I have a sp540v. Grays have always been a challenge. I found changing the gray in CorelDraw to a Pantone colour helped (PMS 427C, 428C, 429C, 430C, 431C) and always turned out nicer & smoother than a cmyk mixture.

 

[SSIPRINT]

Thank you for all the suggestions, they have been very helpful.
Switching the gray to an RGB seemed to smooth it to an acceptable level. Just need to color match a bit.

I tried adjusting the Bidirectional settings in both user mode and Service mode. With the new settings (lined up) the black is way off, (like its printing double) even though on the test prints it looks correct.

 

[unmateria]

Hi! Always flat document to a tif+lzw 200-300 dpis before printing. Dont use opacity % for colours, overprinting, rotated translucent bitmaps etc in a PDF if you are not going to flatten the image. You will have very random problems specially with illustrator.

The problem you are having there is just too much ink and a not aligned head in bidir. Limit ink until it doesnt bleed and print in uni-d to test it first. Unid and bi-d should look exactly the same if its correctly aligned, if not, you will have problems with flat colours, greys and letter below 6pts

I suggest you buying a densitometer if you are in the printing business, or you will became mad with this things. Theres no way to automatically correct flat colours problems without that, specially greys with a random (not exacta) linearization profile.