Profiling an Epson to uncoated press sheets?

[LoweringTheBar]

We have an Epson 9880 that has been profiled to hit our presses running a gloss topkote. Works great for most applications.

However, now the brainiacs in our sales department want a proof that will reflect printing on uncoated white stock, and they've convinced the owners that this is a "great idea."

Kodak doesn't recommend doing it because of the dot gain issues, but of course they won't refuse to make a profile, either.

I've never worked for a shop that had an uncoated calibrated proof. Anybody else out there outputting proofs with two different profiles for coated/uncoated?

[buckeye]

We also only setup to a coated sheet when profiling our press but our rep from Enovations gave us an uncoated profile from another printer and believe it or not, matches closer than our coated profile when printing on an uncoated sheet. We don't use it very often but I'd would say yes that it is being done.

[meddington]

If you have a press profile for uncoated, you could use that as the target/simulation for the Epson. Fogra has an uncoated press data set...Fogra29 I believe. Shouldn't be to big a deal to emulate uncoated press with an Epson, provided you have characterization data.

[LoweringTheBar]

Thanks for your input. I was hoping everyone would think it was nuts to offer an uncoated proof, but obviously "Times, they are a changin'". Wish me luck.

[WharfRat]

I have 3 basic proof/press matching profiles

Coated press sheet to a coated proof sheet (near perfect coated match)
Coated press sheet to uncoated proof sheet (MUCH less expensive operation - and wonderful results)
Uncoated press sheet to uncoated proof sheet (nearly perfect uncoated process proofs and great build and spot rendering)

We will build custom sheet profiles, if there is a specific need (for odd ball stocks)
and we calibrate regularly


I would say 80% of our proof are generated for a coated press sheet to an uncoated proof sheet (C to U)
15% to C to C
and
5% U to U

I may hear a minor complaint once a month about matching color

MSD

[tmiller_iluvprinting]

LTB,
We have offered an uncoated proof for the last year. I've found that our customers with lesser expectations are fine with it. I have found that our customers with higher expectations don't like the reality of the uncoated proof at all. I think they find the gamut compression un-appealing, and they feel their ability to design on press is being stifled. I have heard 'I don't want to see that proof, I know how it's going to print.' For these customers we show a coated proof and when the color has been ok'd we 'optimize' the images for uncoated printing. It's kind of an ass backwards way of doing things, but for these few customers this workflow seems to keep them happy, and our uncoated printing has never looked as good!
Best regards,
Todd

[Padzilla]

Hey

i thought I was the only one crazy enough to do this, but we print to an Epson Enhanced Matte stock, using a custom profile. Our creatives didn't want paper sims on a coated stock, they wanted to "feel" the difference. It's worked out okay, i guess. We get some variation, on press, and sometimes printers call us up "..you want us to match +this+..?"

[avongraphics]

I have many customers who run uncoated and coated profiles with the Epson 9880 and uncoated should defiantly not be a problem as the colour gamut you need to achieve the uncoated values is well within spec of the 9880 even if you use the Ultrachrome Photo Black on a 90gsm or 120gsm uncoated inkjet media. If your worried about dot gain I would advise that you print you own target profile on the uncoated stock that you wish to emulate to standard ink weights on your press and get who ever does your profiling to make a target ICC file and then use this as your uncoated target standard. There are Uncoated ICC files available from www.eci.org if you after a standard ISO Uncoated or ISO Uncoated Yellowish which are based on the characterization data used for FOGRA28, FOGRA29 and FOGRA30. It might be worth testing a few inkjet medias before you start just to make sure they can carry the colour without to much ink limit having to be introduced...

[rich apollo]

We're doing it on newsprint and #5 coated. And sometime in the near future, I'll have to work up supercalendared.

rich

[jstotz]

I'm working on calibrating an Epson 9900 to match our uncoated and UV uncoated press sheets on a matte paper to better match the look and feel of an uncoated press sheet, such as Finch Opaque.

I started by using Outre S180 matte paper with the photo black inks. I couldn't get the darks dark enough so I switched to the matte black inks. This got the darks OK, but I'm still having trouble with the reds and greens. In a 3D plot of the IT8 chart, the reds and greens from the UV uncoated press sheet are outside the gammut of the proofer on that paper. (I think the conventional uncoated is OK.) I increased the ink density as much as I felt comfortable with, and it helped somewhat in the reds, but didn't really solve the problem.

So is this a typical problem that people have seen before? Would a better paper help or is it just not possible to do this? I was thinking of trying Epson Enhanced Matte or HP Super Heavyweight Plus Matte. Or am I going to have to go back to the semimatte that I'm currently using?