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Will an HP Latex printer actually print yellow?

Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
I recently got an outstanding offer to sell out my shop and go to work for a much larger company. We have an HP Latex printer but the "operator" is whining, and I do mean whining, that it won't print yellow. We have this giant color chart and there's not an actual nice, rich yellow on it.

Before I go ape**** and say something that's going to get me fired is it really impossible to print a dang yellow on a $45,000 printer?
 
ddarlak

ddarlak

Go Bills!
i've never had problems with yellow, or any color for that matter on my latex.

absolutely love it.
 
eahicks

eahicks

Magna Cum Laude - School of Hard Knocks
Ours prints many different yellows. Maybe you need to put the yellow cartridge back in the printer.
 
N

neil_se

New Member
The 'professionals' who originally set up my l26500 used a black start value of 0 in their profiles and it would always produce dirty yellows even with a CMYK of 0/0/100/0. No such problems since I taught myself to profile.
 
Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
Okay, this is coming up again. I'd been working around the problem by using the Roland printer (imagine that...a Roland not completely sucking at something) but I've got to use the HP for the job I'm running and I need a PMS 107 or 108.

I know NOTHING about profiling (and only slightly more about how to actually send a job to the printer). Apparently I don't even know enough to find this info on Google....can somebody point me in the direction of some information I can read to start figuring out how to make this thing be my friend?

We're using Onyx, assigning colors in Illustrator using color charts printed from the Roland Color System library. I've tried selecting colors using Pantone swatches in Illustrator and i get the same horrible results. I've tried using 100% Y, 0% CMK and that didn't work. Something isn't right here.

The (cruddy cell phone) photo below shows what my output is when selecting straight Pantone yellow.
 

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dypinc

dypinc

New Member
Unfortunately you are using Onyx. I tried Onyx Thrive when I first got my L360 after having to replace the L25500 and I could find no place where you could set Black as InkJet Black or Clean colors. Furthermore I could not even find where you could set custom colors or edit Pantone colors like measuring a Lab value and entering that for a Pantone color. Onyx hides stuff pretty good so maybe I didn't do enough digging but I found its color management terribly lacking.

Also found out why Onyx is so damn slow, it does not cache the PDF file or read it into its own format the way most other RIPs do and always has to go back and read it again after any little change.
 
CES020

CES020

New Member
There's nothing wrong with Onyx. Pat, you need the Bridge version of the pantone chart. It looks to me like you're trying to hit a color that's not possible.

In Onyx there's a swatch tool that works awesome. Watch this video and try that, and you can get a bunch of yellow swatches printed out at one time, it'll give you CMYK values and you should be able to get really close.

Take a look. Hope this helps. It's helped me a lot since learning about it a month or so ago.

You can start about 4:40 if you don't want to watch the whole thing. Just print that swatch book once you call it up.

[video=youtube;pwLG_y_27Yg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwLG_y_27Yg[/video]
 
dypinc

dypinc

New Member
I just started Thrive and went into the Swatch books but I still can't find a way to pick a Pantone Spot Color (one that is in the doc to print) and measure that and enter new Lab values for that specific spot color. I get a lot of jobs from clients that specify a particular Pantone Spot Color and I don't have the luxury of printing out a chart and choosing some other color just because Onyx can't hit a specific named spot. Some RIPs at least let you edit that specific spot so you can match and then some are just right on without all this trial and error and guesswork.

I did notice that there is a Device Value setting that one could choose 100% Yellow only. Would it work in practice and override the color management settings for a setting of 0%C 0%M 100%Y 0%K in the file, I don't know. I have little confidence in Onyx at this point but it might be worth a try.
 
P Wagner

P Wagner

--
Pat Whatley said:
Okay, this is coming up again. I'd been working around the problem by using the Roland printer (imagine that...a Roland not completely sucking at something) but I've got to use the HP for the job I'm running and I need a PMS 107 or 108.

I know NOTHING about profiling (and only slightly more about how to actually send a job to the printer). Apparently I don't even know enough to find this info on Google....can somebody point me in the direction of some information I can read to start figuring out how to make this thing be my friend?

We're using Onyx, assigning colors in Illustrator using color charts printed from the Roland Color System library. I've tried selecting colors using Pantone swatches in Illustrator and i get the same horrible results. I've tried using 100% Y, 0% CMK and that didn't work. Something isn't right here.

The (cruddy cell phone) photo below shows what my output is when selecting straight Pantone yellow.
Click to expand...

You need to understand that the specific Pantone color you are showing in the image is Pantone Yellow C, and that is a very opaque ink intended to go into an offset or screen press, but not any digital printer in the world. The opacity of Pantone inks is very high, and is completely different than the inks that will pass through small nozzles in a digital printer. The closest Delta E that I have seen for the Pantone Yellow on the Latex machine is about a dE 3. This is consistent with any other digital printer that I have tested, including solvent Seikos, Mimakis, Rolands, and Mutohs.
 
Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
Castek Resources said:
You need to understand that the specific Pantone color you are showing in the image is Pantone Yellow C, and that is a very opaque ink intended to go into an offset or screen press, but not any digital printer in the world. The opacity of Pantone inks is very high, and is completely different than the inks that will pass through small nozzles in a digital printer. The closest Delta E that I have seen for the Pantone Yellow on the Latex machine is about a dE 3. This is consistent with any other digital printer that I have tested, including solvent Seikos, Mimakis, Rolands, and Mutohs.
Click to expand...

Yes, I understand that the color gamut on a digital printer is not the same as mixing inks. I'm just looking for a dang yellow, not a light chartreuse.
 
dypinc

dypinc

New Member
Pat Whatley said:
Yes, I understand that the color gamut on a digital printer is not the same as mixing inks. I'm just looking for a dang yellow, not a light chartreuse.
Click to expand...

If you can use the 100% Yellow the printer prints like in an ink limiting chart (I have found that pretty good) try that Device Value setting and see what happens for a setting of 0%C 0%M 100%Y 0%K in the print file.
 
A

AF

New Member
Another thread referenced how to reach a deep setting in Onyx to preserve pure CMYK colors. Once your profile is configured to preserve pure colors, when you send a CMYK file with 0-0-100-0 yellow it will print the yellow ink only, which is brilliant on the HP latex.
 
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