Honeymoon is over....

[Keith]

Hey everyone! First, I love this new DC252! It saves me money and I can get jobs done faster. But I have a problem. It prints DARK. It has an internal Fiery and I compensate for the darkness by going to "image" and selecting "85% brightness". My old imagerunner 3220 printed very saturated as well. I would compensate for that by going to "image quality" and turning down each color by a couple of steps. My Xante Ilumina is the opposite- it prints LIGHT. So my questions are:

Is this normal? (I don't think I should have to adjust the brightness for EVERY job.)

Is this a service call?

Did I miss something in their "training" when I had it installed last month?

Am I preparing my files incorrectly? (This is probaly a whole 'nother topic of discussion.)

Is this a color management issue? (Again, another discussion...)

Keith

 

[Craig]

Hey everyone! First, I love this new DC252! It saves me money and I can get jobs done faster. But I have a problem. It prints DARK. It has an internal Fiery and I compensate for the darkness by going to "image" and selecting "85% brightness". My old imagerunner 3220 printed very saturated as well. I would compensate for that by going to "image quality" and turning down each color by a couple of steps. My Xante Ilumina is the opposite- it prints LIGHT. So my questions are:

Is this normal? (I don't think I should have to adjust the brightness for EVERY job.)

Is this a service call?

Did I miss something in their "training" when I had it installed last month?

Am I preparing my files incorrectly? (This is probaly a whole 'nother topic of discussion.)

Is this a color management issue? (Again, another discussion...)

Keith

Have you calibrated?

 

[Keith]

I think so. I did it the way they showed me. Of course, I had trouble at first but then I got it. Didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference. Probably need to invest in one of those spectrophotometers (I know, I spelled it wrong).

 

[Craig]

Are you able to change color profiles from within the Fiery? You may have to play around with those until you get what you want and then set it for the default.

 

[X33]

Recommendation # 1 : Calibration. Did you calibrate once for all Output Profiles? Or did you calibrate once per Output Profile? Each paper you use "absorbs" toner differently, so you need to use different Output Profiles, so you need to calibrate for each Output Profile individually.

Recommendation # 2 : Create your own color profile to meet your needs

Another common mistake is leaving the OUTPUT PROFILE to its default. Let's say you are printing on 100lb Cover coated paper, did you change the OUTPUT PROFILE to match the paper you are using? It is under Color > Expert Settings > Output Profile. It makes a big difference. Give this a try first.

 

[Keith]

That's what I'm wondering- how can I adjust color and change profiles in the Fiery. Craig, you run an external Fiery, correct? Perhaps my internal Fiery does not have that option.

X33, I calibrated for coated 3. I think. That's the stock I was running. I did see the output profile but I did not understand most of what was in there.

It was on one particular job that the machine kept printing real heavy on the yellow. That's why I think it's just a color calibration and profile issue, not a service call.

I'll try these recommendations and also call my sales rep- he's pretty attentive.

Thanks guys!

 

[X33]

Both the Bustled and External Fiery have the same option.

Again, go to PRINT DRIVER PROPERTIES > Color > Expert Settings > Output Profile

 

[Keith]

At the risk of sounding retarded, where can I find "print driver properties"?

 

[GusG]

At the very least, when you print you can go to the "Printing Preferences" and under "Colorwise" you press the button "Expert Settings" and on the right side of that window you can choose "Use Media Defined Profile". That should give you the default profile for the particular paper type you've chosen in the "Paper Source" part of the preferences for that job.

Maybe not the absolute best option but it beats using one general default for all paper types.

 

[X33]

At the risk of sounding retarded, where can I find "print driver properties"?

I think you better contact your local support. If you don't know where the Print Driver Properties are, it will be very difficult to explain the rest.

 

[GregNac19]

Our DC252 prints dark and it always has. One option is to just get the tech. to come and lighten the whole machine. Everything will print lighter then.

 

[X33]

Our DC252 prints dark and it always has. One option is to just get the tech. to come and lighten the whole machine. Everything will print lighter then.

The answer to this is COLOR MANAGEMENT.

There are many Color Management tools that can be used to fix this. The first one is CALIBRATION.

 

[ASM]

Do yourself a huge favour. Install an external Fiery or Creo colour server. The Graphic Arts capabilities of the internal controller card are pathetic. Think of the server as the 'brain' controlling the 'body' of your machine. The difference between the onboard 'brain' and a good external box is, like, Neanderthal-versus-Homo Sapiens. Your overall colour management and much more will improve with a correctly set up IC-304 or whatever controller goes with your machine.

 

[thebluesdude]

In my opinion an external rip will not help. We have a DC5252 & DC5000 and a DC252
and with all machines flattened and the standard SWOP settings the 252 I would say is at least 15% darker by default. The best settings for us have been Euroscale but the way around it is to go to your tab at the top of command workstation to the one marked 'Server' then 'manage colour'
What you need to do then is alter the output profile curves by pulling them down a little in the middle, trial and error until you get it just right then save it as your default profile.

 

[X33]

The Graphic Arts capabilities of the internal controller card are pathetic.

Both the Fiery internal RIP and the Fiery external RIP have the same software/platform; therefore, the color management is the same.

You can connect an EFI Profiler on both models and get the same results.

 

[Keith]

Thank you everyone for the help. First thing I need to do is set up profiles for all my machines and calibrate tham along with the monitors. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Monaco color-something version 2 I think. All I need is a couple of uninterrupted hours at my shop (HA! HA! Like that will ever happen!)

 

[FastColorInColumbia]

Has it always printed dark? It may be as simple as how the files are created, what kinda files are they?

 

[arossetti]

Hey Keith,

I've operated a lot of different Xerox color machines from a DC2636 to a DC8000AP, the 250 family comes very dark. We currently have 2 250's both on creo servers and yes you can make adjustments but they will always run darker. I had a 252 not on a color server and I would just send it 15% lighter as someone suggested. For some applications the darker colors look better, for others we run the jobs on our 8000 even if it is 2 sheets.