Hi I just found these forums today when doing a bit of research on colour. Had a browse about and it seems like a great resource, lots of people who obviously know what they're talkin about. Your help would be much appreciated in setting up a bit of colour accuracy, skip past the italics if you don't want the rambling background story!
I recently got a job at a digital print shop, inheriting the running of a 250 with an office finisher and a 260 with a light production finisher. They were duplexing coated stock every day (and not thanking us for it) and jamming all the time, awful registration (needed adjusted for every job).
Luckily we have quite dedicated engineers, and having talked to them, and constantly bothered them with call outs they now run pretty smoothly with ±1mm front/back, hardly any jamming and folders/booklet making often with no skew at all. Belts, developer tanks, transfer rollers all replaced on the both of them - they get pushed pretty hard.
Now I run them more or less in spec, except for printing on 350gsm card now and again. The best change to make to the running of them is no longer duplexing coated stock, the registration was always bad and I'd end up with black marks developing after about 30sh or so.
With all the distractions of the misregistration, jams, dirty marks, bands, colour shifts, toner spitting and skew removed I noticed that the colour between the two machines wasn't even close! The 250 is washed out but reasonably accurate, the 260 tends to a yellow cast and is generally too dark.
So I decided to try and construct a half-coherent colour workflow (we had the old 'look at it, does it look right?) system in before..). I'm thinking of feeding the colour server device independent CMYK (that's generic CMYK right?) and RGB (RGB colour accuracy isn't important, it just has to look nice).
RGB through whatever rendering intent is suitable for the job, and the CMYK through a Device Link profile. There are three stocks we commonly print on, so I'm thinking that I need three profiles for each printer, at the very least.
1.I've set up new output profiles (we're using Fiery Colour Servers - the base model) for each stock, but I'm unsure what calibration sets to associate with them - or can I make a new set?
2. When I'm printing out the profile pages to make an ICC profile, what settings should I have in my Colorwise, Sim profile:none & output profile:chosen stock?
3. Am I even close in my thinking on how to get these two printers imaging off the same hymn sheet?!
I'm using a mac, and I generally print from InDesign, sometimes from Acrobat and rarely from Photoshop and Quark.
Any advice would be much appreciated, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped round the colour workflow in these presses from screen to sheet.
I recently got a job at a digital print shop, inheriting the running of a 250 with an office finisher and a 260 with a light production finisher. They were duplexing coated stock every day (and not thanking us for it) and jamming all the time, awful registration (needed adjusted for every job).
Luckily we have quite dedicated engineers, and having talked to them, and constantly bothered them with call outs they now run pretty smoothly with ±1mm front/back, hardly any jamming and folders/booklet making often with no skew at all. Belts, developer tanks, transfer rollers all replaced on the both of them - they get pushed pretty hard.
Now I run them more or less in spec, except for printing on 350gsm card now and again. The best change to make to the running of them is no longer duplexing coated stock, the registration was always bad and I'd end up with black marks developing after about 30sh or so.
With all the distractions of the misregistration, jams, dirty marks, bands, colour shifts, toner spitting and skew removed I noticed that the colour between the two machines wasn't even close! The 250 is washed out but reasonably accurate, the 260 tends to a yellow cast and is generally too dark.
So I decided to try and construct a half-coherent colour workflow (we had the old 'look at it, does it look right?) system in before..). I'm thinking of feeding the colour server device independent CMYK (that's generic CMYK right?) and RGB (RGB colour accuracy isn't important, it just has to look nice).
RGB through whatever rendering intent is suitable for the job, and the CMYK through a Device Link profile. There are three stocks we commonly print on, so I'm thinking that I need three profiles for each printer, at the very least.
1.I've set up new output profiles (we're using Fiery Colour Servers - the base model) for each stock, but I'm unsure what calibration sets to associate with them - or can I make a new set?
2. When I'm printing out the profile pages to make an ICC profile, what settings should I have in my Colorwise, Sim profile:none & output profile:chosen stock?
3. Am I even close in my thinking on how to get these two printers imaging off the same hymn sheet?!
I'm using a mac, and I generally print from InDesign, sometimes from Acrobat and rarely from Photoshop and Quark.
Any advice would be much appreciated, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped round the colour workflow in these presses from screen to sheet.