Calibrating Older press for Digital Proofing

[ReeseH]

Hello. I am early career prepress and looking for some advice. RIP systems are new to me and Offset presses are totally foreign as I've never worked on one.

Currently our shop uses an older Man Roland offset press for our high capacity color printing needs and a Canon 4100s for digital proofing using the Navigator Harlequin RIP to process our CTP files. Currently navigator tells the canon to print to gracol standard but on some prints ( typically blues and purples ) the canon output does not match the on-screen proof and is not within a tolerance to be usable as a judge of color for our offset pressmen. These are not PMS colors, just standard CMYK. 98% of proofs from this printer are perfect, color wise. In prepress we are using iMacs with Retina display and we don't have color mismatch issues on our digital presses, only the offset one.

I understand that it's been a while since the Man Roland was last calibrated and we have a custom curve setting active in Navigator from that period. Is there a way that we can recalibrate the press in house and update those values or is it recommended to have a third party to calibrate it?

 

[phapp]

Since you mentioned the ManRoland hasn’t been calibrated in a while and you’re new to prepress, I’d strongly recommend bringing in a qualified third party rather than trying to recalibrate in-house. A good starting point is to look for an Idealliance G7 Expert in your area. They can help you recalibrate the press, update your custom curve in Navigator, and ensure your proofs are reliable for color judgment. Full disclosure: my company offers this service as well—if you’d like, let me know your location and I can point you in the right direction.

 

[SteveSuffRIT]

"Currently navigator tells the canon to print to gracol standard but on some prints ( typically blues and purples ) the canon output does not match the digital proof and is not within a tolerance to be usable as a judge of color for our offset pressmen."

You confused me when you said the "canon output does not match the digital proof".
I thought you were using the canon for the proof?
Did you mean to say the proof doesn't match the press, or the press doesn't match the proof?

Do you have a spectrophotometer to measure Delta E (dE, DE) color difference?

 

[ReeseH]

"Currently navigator tells the canon to print to gracol standard but on some prints ( typically blues and purples ) the canon output does not match the digital proof and is not within a tolerance to be usable as a judge of color for our offset pressmen."

You confused me when you said the "canon output does not match the digital proof".
I thought you were using the canon for the proof?
Did you mean to say the proof doesn't match the press, or the press doesn't match the proof?

Do you have a spectrophotometer to measure Delta E (dE, DE) color difference?

Thanks for catching that, I apologize for the confusion. I'll edit it to say that it doesn't match the on-screen proof. I know that there will be some expectation for discrepancy between screen and hardcopy but we've had some proofs come out totally off-color.

 

[SteveSuffRIT]

Well, matching a press sheet to a hardcopy proof is one thing, but matching it to a soft proof computer screen/display is something else! You'll need an ICC profile to color manage your RGB display to match your CMYK press.

 

[ReeseH]

Well, matching a press sheet to a hardcopy proof is one thing, but matching it to a soft proof computer screen/display is something else! You'll need an ICC profile to color manage your RGB display to match your CMYK press.

It's been an uphill battle trying to explain to the CSRs that Press proofs are not going to 110% match on screen proofs. Especially since they're using different monitors than we are in prepress.