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ICC Profiling Service We can certainly do this; contact me at info(at)mspgraphics.com for assistance. To get the best results the following should be given some thought when printing the chart: 1. If the printer is driven by a RIP it should be set up for the paper you're printing on--ink...

Epson 9900 HDR Upgrade Epson 9900 HDR Upgrade Hi. It is rarely a good idea to pick up an old inkjet printer for any critical role. And the 9600 is really old. The 9900 is much, much faster, far quieter, more dependable, has little of the metamerism/color shifts with changing illumination that...

Some Additional Thoughts Some Additional Thoughts The lighting can certainly be an issue, but I would also look carefully at the numbers. A "good" proof or press sheet may vary from the ideal on certain colors to a noticeable degree, and flesh colors are quite critical. Run a test form on the...

High Fidelity Printing Yes, 6-color process printing is potentially very rewarding. Run the same inks for most or all jobs, eliminates most washup, one-click separations with no manual spot builds. So why isn't everyone jumping in? It requires a big, expensive project to put it in place...

Consistent Saturation Different Sources Let me try to condense Terry's very thorough answer a bit and add a thing or two. Every image on every page must be correctly tagged with a profile coming in. This is the only way the color will be interpreted and converted correctly for output on your...

Vendor Malaise Vendor Malaise Hi Don. This is really of course about something much bigger than what sort of spectro one should buy; it's about the industry in general. Where do we begin? Probably with the inception of digital imaging technologies. Printers were rather quickly forced from a...

Ian forgot to mention the Dynamic Wedge, which dynamically samples up to 64 predominant colors in the image, including all spot colors. This allows you to verify not simply the ISO standard solids, tints, and overprints, but any custom colors. There's also enhanced capabilities with the Epson...

Uncoated Profiles Uncoated Profiles Well, Fogra 29L is an approximation to start with, but it was made from press runs on conventional presses like your MOFP. Waterless systems like Presstek might show slightly different overprint behavior or dot gain, but by far the most serious issue is the...

These are pretty reliable devices. The Aztek is very simple mechanically. A bigger consideration may be size: The only remaining Aztek model is small, max scan area around 12x10", though they have refurbed larger ones. You're not going to go wrong with either company.

You didn't say what sort of press this is--conventional sheetfed or digital? Fogra 29L is OK for uncoated sheetfed, not for a digital press. Profiling a conventional press is not something you'll want to do just for the occasional uncoated job. A white point edit can be done, but that would be a...

Uncoated Sheetfed Uncoated Sheetfed Building curves is more or less distinct from color spaces. As for the latter, a good profile for conversion of files as well as a proofing reference would be Fogra29. Download it from fogra.de. As for plate curves, first run the press to uncoated solid...

Profiling in EFI Colorproof XF Profiling in EFI Colorproof XF It isn't possible to diagnose your problem from what you've written. The origin may lie in your linearization and ink limiting as well as your profiling. You can try optimizing to see if this helps. Upgrading to v. 4 will provide...

Spectro for Pressroom Spectro for Pressroom I sell both X-Rite and Techkon, so I'm pretty brand-neutral. The Spectrodens is a very attractive instrument and a joy to use--it lacks nothing. The 528 is also feature-rich, rugged, a bit bulkier (though still compact enough), and has a more robust...

Dot Gain in Photoshop Let's keep this simple. Think of dot gain as the color gradient curve. This is already implicit in any CMYK profile, which describes the press's color input/output performance. On one side of the profile's lookup tables you have CMYK going in and on the other side the...

I agree to some extent. The art is knowing just which parts to teach each person. In general, each person needs specific skills and just enough extra information to give them a sense of where their task fits into the system so they see its importance. What you don't want to do is burden them...

EFI Halftone v. Contone Drivers EFI Halftone v. Contone Drivers This will be a nontechnical description from the standpoint of someone who uses these drivers rather than designs them; for the former you'll have to consult tech support on the EFI Proofing Forum. The halftone drivers have...

Color Management--What it is Not Color Management--What it is Not All these anecdotes are amusing and doubtless true, but irrelevant to the question that was asked in earnest. Besides, saying that CM doesn't matter because customers are often irrational or demanding is like saying speed laws...

Problem is, NexPress output doesn't look like offset, at least not to me. And even a refurb is a lot of money. What about a second-hand direct-imaging press? Those give offset quality because they are offset, and they have fast makeready, and don't take up much space.

Digital Press for Book Covers Digital Press for Book Covers Funny you should ask. I am at this very moment I'm working with a company who is digitally printing book covers--personalized/variable data. And we're laminating. The press is an Indigo, web version. In my experience the Indigo is the...

Fingerprinting Fingerprinting It depends. This is an offset press, right? Running standard inks? What is so different about the paper? If it's only the color the best route might be to have someone edit the white point of a standard profile for that paper type to match that particular paper...