What comes before Newbie? That's where we are - Troubles with X-Rite and colors

[noboost4you]

Hi,

Let me first introduce myself; I'm Bryan and I/we have no experience in the printing industry other than hitting Ctrl-P on the office laser. However, we have recently purchased a couple big ticket items to bring a few items we used to outsource, in-house: Mimaki UJF 3042FX and X-Rite 528.

The Mimaki is used for printing on our product and the X-Rite was for checking to ensure the colors we input into Corel and printing correctly on the substrate. This is where the machines are smarter than us.

No matter what we do, the Pantone color we input into Corel and print through the Mimaki does not translate to the substrate according to the X-Rite 528.

For example, printing Pantone 186C, X-Rite matches 200C at Delta E: 2.37. However, if we print Pantone 1788C, the X-Rite will then read 186C with Delta E: 1.62. This is a horrific band aid and extremely time consuming.

Our substrate is white. We even tried printing on standard white printer paper and the colors don't match up. We've calibrated the X-Rite per their standard and every 24 hrs.

This seems like a loaded question, but what are we doing wrong? I'm game to try anything as long as the Pantone color we input into Corel is what the X-Rite measures once it has been run through the Mimaki UJF-3042FX.

Thanks,
Bryan

[CathieH]

Maybe I'm not hearing you correctly, but generally with CMYK printers, if you put in a Pantone color, you get what you get. You need to make your artwork CMYK with the values that match the PMS color to get even close.

But, like I said, I may be barking up the wrong tree...

[noboost4you]

Maybe I'm not hearing you correctly, but generally with CMYK printers, if you put in a Pantone color, you get what you get. You need to make your artwork CMYK with the values that match the PMS color to get even close.

But, like I said, I may be barking up the wrong tree...

I believe Corel exports with the CMYK color profile. Here are snapshots of the export settings from Corel:

export.jpg
export1.jpg

Something in here incorrect?

[CathieH]

Well, I don't know Corel that well, but I can definitely suggest checking the "Convert spot colors to process" button in the advanced area.

I'd also make sure you up the resolution to at least 300 and perhaps change the profile to "compositive printer profile".

I don't know if this will help, but if I could, I'd love to be there to work out this puzzle with you. I love to fix this kind of stuff, but it's a pretty hands-on situation.

Let us know what happens.
Cathie

[dabob]

Is that printer "pantone certified"???? I can't find any information on the web about the inkset it uses but if its cmyk or cmyk,lc, lm or other six color ink sets its going to approximate pantone colors and there are some colors that you just can't get to from here. It's just the nature of the beast.

[noboost4you]

Is that printer "pantone certified"???? I can't find any information on the web about the inkset it uses but if its cmyk or cmyk,lc, lm or other six color ink sets its going to approximate pantone colors and there are some colors that you just can't get to from here. It's just the nature of the beast.

I'm not sure, but Mimaki's software, RasterLink Pro 5 rip software offers Pantone color matching. When we export the EPS and load it into RasterLink, it says this color is Pantone XXX like we inputted into Corel.

The current inkset in the Mimaki is CMYKWW.

[Stephen Marsh]

Bryan, there are two common approaches for printing spot colours on wide format devices:

1) Let the RIP or printer driver handle spot colours as true spot colours - so no conversion to CMYK in the file. The RIP or printer driver will have a lookup table in device independent L*a*b* colour space, where it will perform a conversion to the final printer colour space (the ICC profile describing the printer resolution, ink and media interaction). An alternative is for the RIP to use a device dependent CMYK lookup table for the media/ink ink use, which would be the larger gamut inkjet device values, not a traditional litho press CMYK. Either way, in theory the colour should be better as the Pantone colour is not being dumbed down. You have to have colour profiles for the output media in question, so that the conversion from device independent Pantone to the device dependent printer is accurate.

2) Print out CMYK or RGB test charts using your standard production workflow, in order to manually match a printed Pantone book against a final print on the production material. Once you know what values are acceptable for a match, define the spot colour with these known values. You may or may not have more success with using a CMYK or RGB file, depending on the colour management settings of the printer driver or RIP.

Due to the substrate and the ink in use, one may not be able to hit certain Pantone colours as they will be out of gamut.


Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh

[michaelejahn]

@ Bryan - my first concern would be 'can you actually print CMYK reliably" - then I would worry about Pantone. What software are you using to analyze ? If you have no answer for that question, you might start by contacting a G7 color expert. Visit this site and see if you can find someone in your area to come on site and help.

go here ( and select Ohio )

Master Printer Database - Welcome

Or, reach out to The Color Management Group.

Color Management Group

Even people who a great deal of experience with printing use these folks when faced with what you are facing.

Good luck.

[noboost4you]

Ok, sorry for the delay in replies; been busy testing and researching.

Our Mimaki printer is not a certified Pantone printer. Thus, inputting Pantone into graphic software and/or RIP software which reads the correct Pantone, but the printer is physically incapable of reproducing it with it's inks. Essentially, we will have to simulate the Pantone color with a special combination of CMYK values and running them through the printer. We've been able to do so and have our X-Rite tell us what it closely matches. I was able to get a Delta E of 1.28 for 186C on C: 0, M: 89, Y: 76, and K: 0. It's whacky, but it works.

Thank you everyone for your feedback!

[CathieH]

Glad you found a solution. When you try to match pantone colors via CMYK, I think you'll find that blue and purple are the absolute most difficult, especially blue. Those might take more work than say a red or yellow.