Getting yellow cast on prints

[pauly92]

Hello, first time poster, long time lurker.

I'm running Onyx x12 rip
oce arizona printer
I have a barbieri SpectroPad and LFP.

The problem i'm having is I'm getting a yellow cast though my prints.
I have profiled though onyx, Xrite i1 profiler and Xpert profiler.

Onyx produces the worst profiles, not able to reproduce reds well.
i1 profiler and Xpert are very similar outputs. Both produce fantastic reds, but most other colours has a yellow cast to it.

For the life of me i cannot work it out. I have tired different rendering intents. Nothing gets the results i need.

The SpectroPad and LFP both put out the same profiles. so there's no issue with any of them.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Programs?

Thanks.

 

[Correct Color]

Pauly,

That's a lot of money spent on hardware and software to be having this issue.

Which I'd argue is a lesson in why usually that money is better spent on hiring a professional to do the job.

It's impossible to say just from what you've written here exactly what's going on, but it's a good bet it has something to do with how you're generating your targets for i1P and Xpert Profiler.



Mike Adams
Correct Color

 

[pauly92]

Mike,

I can understand why you'd say that.
We do a lot of printing on irregular materials. A main one is glass. Many types of backlits ect.
I've had someone come out and profile it before a few years ago.

To get something straight, The profiles i've created in xrite and xpert are very good, to a professional level. Start blacks are where they should be. I've pretty much dissected the readings to create the black generation.
I have checked the profiles though photoshop and they are very close the sRGB standard, as in no big out of gammut changes.

Before i left work i changed the input profile to the same as my output one and did a test print. The cast disappeared. And it printed what the screen showed. - which is what i want.
I didn't get enough time to play with that setting as i had to go home.
I'll be playing with them more tomorrow when i get there.
But some images went to much saturation.

I'm not actually sure what the imput profile is suppose to be, i had lead to believe it should be what ever the image was created in?
I turned off the use embeded profile setting to eliminate finding out if its that or not.
I remember the guy who did a profile for me changed something in there for his profiles. But it was to long ago to remember what it exactly was.

Thanks.

 

[Correct Color]

Pauly,

You know, you really, really need some color management help.

And the problem is, you can ask for it online, and get all sorts of answers, but you have no way of knowing if whoever it is giving you those answers has any idea what they're talking about.

So now there you are, with an LFP, and a Spectropad, and Profile Xpert, and i1Profiler -- that works out to about 16 grand US in hardware and software, let alone all the time you've invested -- and you're still casting about on the internet for answers, since October!. And yes, I've read through all your posts at Onyxtalk as well.

You could have flown me to Australia in October for way less than what you've got in this and that would have been the end of your issues.

Problem I see honestly is that by the statements you're making and the questions you're asking, you've learned a good deal but you still don't have a good solid grasp on just what color management is, or how and why it works.

But just a couple points:

sRGB isn't a standard. It's a color space.

There's no proper place to start black. Black start is completely at the discretion of the profile-maker, and there are many, many reasons for why and how to handle black generation.

The input profile should always be the profile in which the file was created. If you're using it and getting a bad result, the flaw is in your profile. If you switch to something else and like the result, that's just a happy coincidence of a particular file. It is guaranteed that will not always be the case.


Mike Adams
Correct Color

 

[pauly92]

Mike,

Yes i did notice you're on onyx talk.

I've had someone profile my printer before, came up great. Still use it today for my main work.

The major problem is that having you, or someone else come out and profile all the media i use. Each few week i have a different media that i have a big project on that gets a profile.
We're really not a 'standard' print shop.

I have a lot of colour matching to do, a lot of "can you copy this exact colour" ect and the equipment becomes very handy

I do understand that asking on the internet will not get me the right answer. I've seen many wrong answers. I'm not new to forums though. But at times you may get that person saying "hey i know exactly what problem you're having"


To recap.
My last profile, I used the LFP to measure. i1proflier to create the profile (1500 patches)
Ink linearisation though onyx.

I'll start by doing the ink restrictions and calibration though onyx. Save and exit the media manager.
Print the patches with all ICC off.

Measure, create. (I'll use the ICC white point. largest size, blacks set to where it prints best. rest is on 0 i.e saturation ect)

Open media manager and import my icc i just created.

I'll create a quick set, set the icc i made to the output, input is use embedded ICC or sRGB. SWOP for cmyk.
Rendering intents is on preceptual unless i need to change it to relative colormetric.


Also, which ever software i've used, i get the same output. Except in onyx using their profiling quide.

 

[pauly92]

All im really after is what could possibly causing a colour cast.


What i'm saying with the sRGB is when i put my profile though photoshop with a soft proof, the colours are very close to the original image with a lot of out of gamut colours. Colour shifts are very minimal.

My input icc is embeded or sRGB. output is my icc profile.

The charts i use are usually around 1500 patches to 2000 patches.

What i'm trying to say is, How can it be possible to get the same yellow cast through the print if use i1profiler with their charts. or use barbieri's pre made charts and their xpert programs. But it doesn't show up in a soft proof.

 

[Correct Color]

Typically -- but not always -- if you see a cast in the print, but not in the soft proof, that indicates some conflict between the linearization and the profile.

Meaning that some of the information in the linearization is at odds with what the profile expects it to be, so the profile compensates by printing to make up the difference. I'd kind of suspect you've got something like that going on here. But the thing is it's just impossible to say for sure without being there and seeing what's going on.

One free tip though: Use an IT8 7.4 patch set to profile CMYK. Not something generated by either i1Profiler or Profile Xpert.

 

[DYP]

profile compensates by printing to make up the difference.

Profile Compensates?

​Explain that one.

 

[pauly92]

Thanks mike, that's what i hopefully was looking for.

I know onyx uses the automated restrictions which i always used, but i have been reading their bulletins about "advance restrictions" the last few days.

Appreciate that!

 

[Correct Color]

DYP

Profile Compensates?

​Explain that one.

I probably worded that a little poorly, but basically what I'm referring to is a situation where there's a misread of the while point in the linearization. What will happen then is that the RIP will wind up trying to print whatever the mis-read white point was.

Believe me, I've seen it happen more than once.

But since the profile was made with patches that incorporated the mis-read linearization, when it's used to soft proof, it doesn't display the artifact.

 

[Correct Color]

Pauly,

If you made your i1P and Profile Xpert profiles from one linearization set, and your Onyx-generated ICC with another set, I'd say this is the most likely culprit. However, if you made all three from one linearization set, it is not.

If you did use a separate linearization for the Onyx-generated icc, try making an icc from that with either I1P or PX. If this is the culprit, you shouldn't get it if you do.

 

[Jzink]

Are you using an i1P or the EFi version (called the ES1000). The ES1000 has a UV Cut Filter on it (Flip it over, it will say UV-Cut on the lens), I have seen this cause issues as you are describing above.

 

[pauly92]

Mike,

I just did one with a new ink restrictions and linearisation, a profile with onyx and i1p. (xpert was only a 15 day trial, and the output is near enough the same as i1p)

Note, when i did the restrictions, i restrict them myself to the maximum chroma allowed before the curve starts going back. (also instructed to do this on the onyx guides) The automated one allows ink past the maximum chroma.
linearisation was very good, very linear.

The onyx profile. has a slight less yellow tint. its mostly noticeable on the lighter colours and on the greens, yellows and browns. The blues seem okay but the reds are terrible

The i1p profile has a little more of a yellow tint, also noticeable on the lighter colours, greens, yellows and browns. the colours seem more 'rich' The blues are similar to onyx, the reds are also close to where needed.

Also to add that i did both profiles with small charts, 500 patches. they are basically identical to the ones with larger patches.

All measurements where done on my spectropad.
i1p was printed with all icc off in the right print mode with no icc attached to it. (i did the colour check to make sure it was printing the patches with no profile, just the ink restrictions)


Jzink,

I use a spectropad. Also have an LFP. same results across the 2 devices.

 

[Correct Color]

Pauly,

Well, when you look at your linearizations graphs in Onyx, they key thing to look for is if all four colors start at exactly zero.

If any of them don't, then that's the issue I was talking about. (Sorry, hadn't seen it in awhile and had forgotten that.) If you do see that, go back and relinearize till you get rid of it, then reprofile.

If you don't, then your issue is somewhere else. My guess would be a reads error due to the odd material, but it's only a guess. It really does get down to needing to be there to see it.

If you want, though, feel free to send me the ICC. I'll open it up and see if I see anything obvious.

For that matter if you want to send me an Onyx .OML file of the media, I'll take a look at the whole thing for you.





Mike

 

[pauly92]

Mike, PM Sent

For the threads sake,
All linearisation starts at 0,
material is just coated paper. oce blueback.

 

[Correct Color]

Pauly,

Okay, I looked all through what you sent me, and found a few things:

First is that your linearizations are fine. They're not what's causing your issue.

I will say though that I do think there's a fair amount I could show you about profiling in Onyx that might make a fair amount of difference in the overall quality of your profiles. Of course I'd have to go on the clock, but it is something I could remote in to do, since you have all the tools there at hand, and since the Oce is a pretty straightforward machine to profile.

I will mention that I hate the Print>Read>Next profiling function in Onyx, and just never, ever use it, which is the way you're making your profile. Onyx actually has vastly superior tools available. But I doubt that's what's causing your issue. I also compared your i1P profile to your Onyx-engine profile, and internally, the i1P one was vastly superior -- as I would expect.

I didn't find any one single thing that jumped out at me that would be causing your issue, although one thing that was kind of odd is that you have yellow as your highest-limited color ink at 100%, with your magenta at 88%, and your cyan at 90%.

There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but honestly I don't ever recall making a profile configured that way, or seeing one either. Also on the Oce, what that means is that you're allowing the yellow to use the max dot size, and not allowing the cyan or magenta to use it.

Typically with the Oce on the resolution you're using, I turn the largest dot size off on all four colors. Of course you'd tend to think that if that caused any issue, it would be in shadows and not in highlights, but it might be worth trying again with your yellow at the same setting as your magenta, just to see what happens.



Mike

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Just curious what the paper white Lab value is and what measurement device and mode (M0, M1 etc).


Stephen Marsh

 

[Correct Color]

Stephen,

White point is 94; 1; -3. I think he said he did the readings on the media files he sent me with a Spectropad, which if it's like every other Barbieri device, defaults to M0. And if not a Spectropad then an LFP, which defaults to M0 as well.

I guess this could be OBA's. But with this white point and on blackback vinyl, I'd sure doubt it.


Mike

 

[pauly92]

Mike,

Thanks for your effort in that. I'll take everything into consideration that you've said and hopefully tomorrow afternoon I'll try your suggestion. If nothing we'll work something out.
I have been out of the office today/yesterday (thursday) and will be out today (friday) for 3/4 of a day.


Also, reading where done on my Spectropad M1 (D50). Usually its on M0 but onyx (x10) use to have issues in changing it from M1 to M0 and i haven't changed the settings since the upgrade.

The material used is blue back paper, Coated. I dont think it has any OBA on it as it's a cheap paper we use for testing and disposing.

 

[Correct Color]

Pauly,

In that case, I'd also try again using M0.


Mike