Color consistency on my Ricoh devices

C

CaliPrintGuy

Active member
Hi all,

I’m hoping to tap into the collective experience here. I run a print production shop with a couple Ricoh 7500s and am currently working through some challenges with color consistency on reorders.

We calibrate daily and are operating well within Ricoh’s recommended monthly duty cycles, but I’m still getting some pushback from clients when reprinting jobs done a month or two prior — even with the exact same files. Some colors, especially in brand-critical areas, seem to drift just enough to raise concerns.

To give a bit of context:

  • We do convert RGB to CMYK for all color-critical clients.
  • I understand the impact of file types and embedded profiles.
  • My background is in offset printing — I started on a Heidelberg Speedmaster 52 — so moving to digital has been a shift, particularly when it comes to managing expectations and reproducing colors reliably over time.

My questions to the group:

  1. Do any of you recalibrate specifically before color-critical jobs, even if daily calibration is already in place?
  2. What best practices or workflows do you follow to ensure color consistency across reprints — especially after several weeks?
  3. Are there any RIP-level color management tricks or printer-side tweaks that have made a difference for you?

Any advice, workflows, or insights you’re willing to share would be greatly appreciated. I’m looking to tighten up this part of our operation and would love to learn from those of you who’ve dialed it in.

Thank you!!
 
I have a 7210, our only digital printer and I run it quite a bit. Though I do care and pay attention, I’ll be honest most of our clients are not overly critical and its rare anything comes back for color…when it does it’s usually a customer file issue (ie: layering in photos to achieve a certain effect or poor color correction by their headshot photographer, or incorrect color build for their own colors…). I calibrate pretty infrequently on this machine compared to previous machines I’ve had, never had a need for daily calibration on it…most of the time I do not calibrate unless I see an issue, or if I know there is a pickier job. So often it’ll be 2-7 weeks between calibration.

When installed my tech showed me a program under the maintenance menu…called execute color process adjust or something like that..near the top, takes a couple minutes. He advised to run that before calibrating and when changing any significantly color affecting parts.

I do calibrate individually for uncoated, matte, and gloss profiles.

Environment can be an issue, I’m sure you know to monitor your relative humidity of course.

At the file level I’m rarely doing anything special unless it’s a customer that is known to send us canva junk, then I might choose to flatten + convert to cmyk before sending to the printer. Some customers are very inconsistent in how they define their own brand colors, which is a problem in itself but if you are unable to educate them you can change how your rip prints a specific color (you can sweeten a specific PMS or tell it if it sees a certain color value to change it something else automatically, assuming you have that fiery color suite).
 
CaliPrintGuy said:
Hi all,

I’m hoping to tap into the collective experience here. I run a print production shop with a couple Ricoh 7500s and am currently working through some challenges with color consistency on reorders.

We calibrate daily and are operating well within Ricoh’s recommended monthly duty cycles, but I’m still getting some pushback from clients when reprinting jobs done a month or two prior — even with the exact same files. Some colors, especially in brand-critical areas, seem to drift just enough to raise concerns.

To give a bit of context:

  • We do convert RGB to CMYK for all color-critical clients.
  • I understand the impact of file types and embedded profiles.
  • My background is in offset printing — I started on a Heidelberg Speedmaster 52 — so moving to digital has been a shift, particularly when it comes to managing expectations and reproducing colors reliably over time.

My questions to the group:

  1. Do any of you recalibrate specifically before color-critical jobs, even if daily calibration is already in place?
  2. What best practices or workflows do you follow to ensure color consistency across reprints — especially after several weeks?
  3. Are there any RIP-level color management tricks or printer-side tweaks that have made a difference for you?

Any advice, workflows, or insights you’re willing to share would be greatly appreciated. I’m looking to tighten up this part of our operation and would love to learn from those of you who’ve dialed it in.

Thank you!!
Click to expand...
Ran/managed a 7210 for several years.
My 2¢ and ALL MY OWN OPINIONS:

1. Ricoh Color Calibration is so gross (not finely tuning) that you actually make things WORSE when used as recommended.
Don't believe me? Calibrate, Print a job, Calibrate, Print the same job. Too often we saw differences. That said it IS useful to 'Calibrate' after any change to the color units themselves (not usually toner) to get the engine back to 'spec'.

2. DOCUMENTED COLOR SERVICE ISSUE: If you have a the fifth color unit it HAS TO HAVE TONER during ANY usage. The engine specifically lays down a 'measured' color control patch on the belt constantly. At the beginning of our experience we noticed the fifth toner being used even though we weren't printing the fifth color. Since we had to PAY for it we just left it empty. Then the wonderful 'Color Control' software FAILED all running calibration and never threw an error. Yup. Stopped calibrating. This led to wild color swings. LOL. This is when their engineering department got involved and said 'Not Possible.' We proved it to an engineer watching it run and change color while running. We additionally confirmed this by manually running a calibration and watching it fail. Ricoh said ' No fifth toner no guarantee on color consistency.'
We said 'No free fifth toner to fix it, come get your machine if it doesn't calibrate as promised.'
And we compromised.
Service showed us how to go into service mode and tell the software it did NOT have a fifth unit and voila! running calibration was fixed with an empty fifth toner. Of course this requires several re-starts but hey at least it printed consistently again.

3. We got used to making 'Job Specific Color Curves' in Fiery that we re-used to good effect.

YMMV.
:cool:
 
We have Konica's, but the concept still applies....Chasing after consistent color on digital toner presses can feel like a never-ending pursuit. All of the different components that affect color wear down relatively quickly and at different intervals (charge wires, developer, transfer belts, fuser rollers, etc). So even after you get the color dialed in just right (even if you go for industry benchmarks like G7 or GRACoL), the colors will start to shift again. Then, when you have to repair/replace one of the components, you have to start the process all over again.

So while we do calibrate somewhat consistently, and even have our printers set to automatically run the daily "Color Process Adjustment" as mentioned by @kslight , we aim for general-pleasing-color rather than perfection. Luckily, we only have one account for which color is critical, so we just make sure to do a fresh calibration on that stock before running their monthly job.

If the accounts you mentioned are overly critical of color, you might need to charge them more to outsource it to an offset print shop that can use pantone inks or has more control with CMYK on their press. I'd also suggest keeping samples from previous runs that you can refer to each time you print in order to verify if it's coming out within an acceptable range.
 
phapp said:
Do you have custom ICC profiles setup?
Are you doing any verification to a specification, like GRACoL2013?
Do you have the Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster?
Click to expand...
I couldn't agree more about keeping your color profiles (the output profiles that you are calibrating to in the first place) updated on a regular basis. If you already have Color Profiler Suite and a spectrometer licensed to it you're good to go. If not, you can use another vendor's such as X-Rite or simply pay Ricoh to do it for you and show you how at the same time. The RACA is a great product for creating profiles almost instantly and can be used on any device Ricoh or otherwise that uses ICC profiles.
 
Some of the biggest influence on color shift as jwheeler has stated is internal components wearing down over time especially on the more modern Ricoh systems. I'm assuming you were instructed on how to perform daily maintenance (Morning Warm-Ups) if so the degradation of internal components combined with you running specific settings every morning that directly influence color will end up being where color shifts the most. If you notice any sort of even mild banding/uneven density in your morning warmup sheets DO NOT CALIBRATE THE MACHINE. If you calibrate the machine with those issues you're essentially telling the software to compensate for the machines current faults. If those faults end up getting fixed then you're essentially building up inconsistent calibrations every morning which lead to inconsistent color even if the machine is at 100%. Always always always make sure you have 0 density issues in your warm up sheets before performing any sort of calibrations.

EDIT: I want to expand on this statement "If you notice any sort of even mild banding/uneven density in your morning warmup sheets DO NOT CALIBRATE THE MACHINE."

Even if those density issues are mild and don't show on any of your normal prints it still has a huge effect on the calibrations you perform every morning. A lot of the time these mild density/banding issues are an easy fix by wiping down specific light glass in the machine.
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure I understand "morning warm ups" or "specific light glass"? I used those terms for my old canon printers but not on a ricoh.
 
bill kahny said:
I'm not sure I understand "morning warm ups" or "specific light glass"? I used those terms for my old canon printers but not on a ricoh.
Click to expand...
Morning Warm-ups refer to the morning maintenance you're expected to perform on modern ricoh machines to keep consistent color output IE Across feed density adjustment, With feed density adjustment etc etc. The light glass refers to the Tim Red and Tim Mag glass that allows the passing of light to detect registration/color inaccuracies which allows the machines to compensate for the issues. RCOP training is what uses these terms and it was originally created AFAIK for the C9100's and above. I do know the 7000 series are now included.


 
LeGerbs said:
Morning Warm-ups refer to the morning maintenance you're expected to perform on modern ricoh machines to keep consistent color output IE Across feed density adjustment, With feed density adjustment etc etc. The light glass refers to the Tim Red and Tim Mag glass that allows the passing of light to detect registration/color inaccuracies which allows the machines to compensate for the issues. RCOP training is what uses these terms and it was originally created AFAIK for the C9100's and above. I do know the 7000 series are now included.


Click to expand...
Do you have any idea of a ballpark of what they charged for this training?
 
ReproElectroProspero said:
Do you have any idea of a ballpark of what they charged for this training?
Click to expand...
If you buy the machine new outright it's included, however if you want to buy it standalone it's in the area of $4,000ish. (It could have changed by now) If you have inexperienced digital press operators it can be a very worthwhile investment but if you have a pretty good understanding of how digital toner based printers work it's probably best to learn new information from your tech or research it online.

I will add the documentation you get from the training is the absolute most valuable part of the training.
 
Last edited:
LeGerbs said:
If you buy the machine new outright it's included, however if you want to buy it standalone it's in the area of $4,000ish. (It could have changed by now) If you have inexperienced digital press operators it can be a very worthwhile investment but if you have a pretty good understanding of how digital toner based printers work it's probably best to learn new information from your tech or research it online.

I will add the documentation you get from the training is the absolute most valuable part of the training.
Click to expand...
We have a C7200X and Pro 8320 on a 5 year lease, never knew this kind of training was an option. Thanks for the info!
 
ReproElectroProspero said:
Do you have any idea of a ballpark of what they charged for this training?
Click to expand...
We almost had to pay extra (1 year in lease) until we noted that we were facing consistent issues with reliable service.
Then they agreed to a one day training.
Yes the training and documentation helped going forward.
Just knowing more about regular 'service' procedures that solve NORMAL problems was enlightening because the service techs rarely if ever performed maintenance - they just came and replaced the components needed to get us running.
A year later they were actually finally starting to 'maintain' the machine.
Sigh.
 
LeGerbs said:
Some of the biggest influence on color shift as jwheeler has stated is internal components wearing down over time especially on the more modern Ricoh systems. I'm assuming you were instructed on how to perform daily maintenance (Morning Warm-Ups) if so the degradation of internal components combined with you running specific settings every morning that directly influence color will end up being where color shifts the most. If you notice any sort of even mild banding/uneven density in your morning warmup sheets DO NOT CALIBRATE THE MACHINE. If you calibrate the machine with those issues you're essentially telling the software to compensate for the machines current faults. If those faults end up getting fixed then you're essentially building up inconsistent calibrations every morning which lead to inconsistent color even if the machine is at 100%. Always always always make sure you have 0 density issues in your warm up sheets before performing any sort of calibrations.

EDIT: I want to expand on this statement "If you notice any sort of even mild banding/uneven density in your morning warmup sheets DO NOT CALIBRATE THE MACHINE."

Even if those density issues are mild and don't show on any of your normal prints it still has a huge effect on the calibrations you perform every morning. A lot of the time these mild density/banding issues are an easy fix by wiping down specific light glass in the machine.
Click to expand...
And this is the kind of information that should be at the front of ANY operator manual.
LOL.
So where in the 'manuals' did you find this information?
Or did you just figure it out on your own?
We were never told to do a 'Daily Warm-up' - they just asked if we 'calibrated'.
 
chriscozi said:
And this is the kind of information that should be at the front of ANY operator manual.
LOL.
So where in the 'manuals' did you find this information?
Or did you just figure it out on your own?
We were never told to do a 'Daily Warm-up' - they just asked if we 'calibrated'.
Click to expand...
This was one the the operating procedures we needed to perform daily and was explicitly stated in training and mentioned by our tech a lot. We dont run the 7000 series we run two 9210s however I was told by another local shop that does run a 7200 they had a daily maintenence for it as well.

Also I agree basic maintenence on a machine you own or lease should be given to you without training but big corporations are gonna do whatever they want lol.
 
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