Image quality - Canon Imagepress V700

[tjasaj]

Hello everyone,


I'm very new in the printing business - I do not have a print shop per se, but I make planners & planner stickers for my online shop, so basically all the printing I do is just my own stationery products. I recently upgraded from an old Xerox C500 to two new Canon printers: Varioprint115 (which I absolutely ADORE) and an Imagepress V700.

I use Imagepress mostly for printing planner stickers, greetings cards and so on. Since the beginning the image quality was not exactly like I imagined it to be(still a thousand times better than on my old Xerox), but it wasn't a huge deal breaker for me - now i have a bit more time and would like to learn what can I do to make it better.
I'm printing mostly on uncoated self-adhesive paper (Ritrama by Fedrigoni) and matte coated 300-350gsm paper (Symbol Satin by Fedrigoni). I'm noticing the printed graphic looks a bit "spotty", especially lighter colors. If I try to make, for example, light beige stickers - it just looks super dull and the printed surface is not smooth, looks a bit blotchy. The black color is not exactly black, but muted black etc.

I'm guessing the culprit might be the paper - I'm sure the quality would be better if I used a glossy paper, but I would prefer to stick to matte/uncoated, becuse most of my stickers are supposed to be written on. Are there any tips and tricks you can give me as far as what could I do to make quality a bit better? Unfortunately, I don't know much about the art of print - I try to educate myself with stuff I find online, but information can be very sparse.

I design in Illustrator in CMYK and export to high quality PDF. On my printer I always set image quality to 1200 dpi before printing. That's pretty much all I normally do.


I apologize for a very newbie question Thank you in advice to anybody who will take the time to help me out

 

[jwheeler]

A few things to note:

1. When you're loading the media into the printer, are you changing the setting at the machine to the correct GSM and coating settings?
2. When you're sending from the computer, are you matching the details in the print driver to the paper settings in step 1?
3. Have you tried calibrating using a spectrophotometer? Generally, you need to make one calibration profile for coated stocks, and one for uncoated stocks. Ideally, you'll want to do the calibration process directly on the stock(s) you're printing on. This video shows how to calibrate with a spectrophotometer from a Fiery controller. The steps will be slightly different if you have the Canon controller, but still follow the same overall concept.
4. Is the stock you're using specifically designated for digital dry-toner presses? This is very important to verify that you're not using offset stocks, or media designed only for inkjet, etc. The Symbol Satin states that it's for dry-toner presses, but I couldn't find specifics on the Ritrama.

 

[gordo]

Have you tried sending it sRGB instead of cmyk?

 

[narseman]

Have you tried sending it sRGB instead of cmyk?

↑ What he said..↑

 

[narseman]

On my printer I always set image quality to 1200 dpi before printing. That's pretty much all I normally do.

That CAN be deceiving. 1200 dpi is fine, if your doc image is at 1200. But if your image is 300 dpi, printing it at 1200 will not make it better. You would be printing a low res image with finer dots.. Just a side note to consider. If you want more gloss in your toner print, get more toner down. Make it thicker.

 

[TJPrinter]

The muted black makes it sound like the issue could be whether the machine was calibrated using all the steps that Canon requires. I don’t mean calibration from Fiery calibration, but the actual machine color calibration that is required. There’s also a calibration for stock weight categories that needs to be completed.

I don’t have a Canon here any longer so I can’t list all the steps that Canon requires now. There was another post on this forum that went through all the steps in detail (sorry I couldn’t locate it) but Canon has them listed in their online manual for the V series adjust image quality, see if those steps get you to where you want to be.

 

[tngcas]

Muted black (and other colors) could also depend on how the artwork is being designed/exported
-- Registration Black vs. Black Only (they're different).
-- Using Transparent png images on top of solid colors (like black)- this can cause the color underneath it to go muted depending on how the artwork is layered and the color spaces of each piece (rgb image on top of cmyk)
-- Check to make sure illustrator isn't down sampling your graphics when you export. If you're printing 1200 dpi and it's downsamplling your graphics to 300dpi then it'll actually make the prints look worse. We leave our printers at 600 dpi and only use 1200 if we know for sure the graphics support that.
-- make sure your color spaces match your output profile and that those match the color profile you are printing to.

 

[namelessentity]

Uncoated stocks don't look super great on Canon, especially cheap papers. that said, you should be able to adjust voltage settings to get a smoother print.
Did you go with Fiery, or PrismaSYNC?

 

[ayunatsume]

I just demoed a Canon ImagePress V700 and tried to make it run to FOGRA29 like our HP Indigo does and our conventional 4c offset on uncoated book paper.

I don't like the built-in Fiery profile for uncoated. Washed out and ugh. Also its shiny and unnatural for me.

I profiled it and applied an aggressive GCR and set the ink limit to 250.

Long story short, the toner is way less shiny and is going towards the Indigo's F29 print. There is still some sheen but there's way less. Color-wise its pretty close to the Indigo's FOGRA29 simulation. There is some sheen in the rich blacks but I think its almost there especially with halftones. Ideally there is no sheen like in the Indigo or real offset. Maybe if I played around with it I can tone it down even more. I tried TAC limit to 180 but I think its too much.

I did this by printing the CMYK color chart with color conversion bypass or colorwise off. Then scanning to create the profile. Then insert that profile as a new output profile. Then use that output profile in your color management setting for that paper in Fiery/RIP. That is enough for most, but since I need FOGRA29, I also put FOGRA29 or ISO Ubcoated as the input CMYK profile. Then set your RGB input to convert using the CMYK input profile too. For creating your files, make sure to convert to FOGRA29, and you probably want to turn on Black Point Compensation as a newbie user -- maybe even use Perceptual.

Generically, you can use FOGRA39 as the input CMYK profile and not convert RGB/LAB to the CMYK input profile.

An external spectrophotometer can go a long way.

Be sure to take advantage of the auto-gradation and built-in spectrophotometer too. Regularly run that in-machine calibration, especially the auto-gradation.

If the image is spotty, check your location's humidity as that can cause mottling. From what I understand, you can also try other dithering options (apparently Canon's term for line screening).