betterbannerprinting
02-18-2007, 02:13 PM
We have a Roland FJ-52 (actually converted by Splash of Color to a solvent printer, basically by adding some heaters) and we strictly use CMYK 4-process on uncoated vinyl materials. Its great using Pantone color guides/bridges to find exact colors for say... a logo. You ignore what you see on screen and just trust the CMYK values on your guide. However, this really doesn't help with the majority of what we do.
I'll design a banner using Photoshop in CMYK mode... it will usually have photographs and other effects, with some solid color here and there for maybe a logo. It is designed on a computer screen, so artistically the colors are matching and looking good. Print it out to our printer and blam... some colors aren't hitting right (depending on what hue/range) and generally everything is darker.
Now, our Pantone guides come in handy here for say... our logo. But what about the rest of the file, with the photographs and various colors? We can't just go through and manually adjust the colors in this fashion. Sure we can tweak all sorts of things, but this puts a time restraint we don't want onto all our projects. All we're really looking for is close color resemblance... not color matching. Print this file out on our Epson Stylus photo inkjet and the colors aren't exact, but they are all very CLOSE to what is on my mid-level LCD screen. This is what we're looking for in our Roland prints, close color resemblance. I'm assuming we can do this through a color profile, but the question is HOW, WHAT profile to use, and WHERE do we get it? (We use an old version of FlexiSIGN-Pro to RIP/Print).
Hope someone out there has a good suggestion! Thanks!
I'll design a banner using Photoshop in CMYK mode... it will usually have photographs and other effects, with some solid color here and there for maybe a logo. It is designed on a computer screen, so artistically the colors are matching and looking good. Print it out to our printer and blam... some colors aren't hitting right (depending on what hue/range) and generally everything is darker.
Now, our Pantone guides come in handy here for say... our logo. But what about the rest of the file, with the photographs and various colors? We can't just go through and manually adjust the colors in this fashion. Sure we can tweak all sorts of things, but this puts a time restraint we don't want onto all our projects. All we're really looking for is close color resemblance... not color matching. Print this file out on our Epson Stylus photo inkjet and the colors aren't exact, but they are all very CLOSE to what is on my mid-level LCD screen. This is what we're looking for in our Roland prints, close color resemblance. I'm assuming we can do this through a color profile, but the question is HOW, WHAT profile to use, and WHERE do we get it? (We use an old version of FlexiSIGN-Pro to RIP/Print).
Hope someone out there has a good suggestion! Thanks!