KM 8000 User Forum

[PrePress Gal]

I was looking for a user forum in search of answers in calibrating, profiles and media settings, but didn't find anything. Please direct me there if I have missed it.

Question:

If I calibrate say to Coated GL using coated paper, this shows up under calibration in my color management window. Now, if I switch to uncoated or plain paper in my print menu, how does this affect my color? I am experiencing huge color shifts if I select different paper types in printing and am trying to track down what is causing this besides user ignorance. For instance, I am printing a job on Coated paper, but only getting close to color if I select "plain" paper in my print menu. Do I need to calibrate for each paper type or the one we use the most?

So I am a little in the dark about which paper settings to use, which to calibrate to and does everything need to match up exactly from the Paper Type under "Quick Access", "Media", Tray setting and Calibration?

Thanks.

 

[Craig]

Calibrate to each paper type.

 

[PrePress Gal]

When I calibrate, it shows that setting being used in color management and is not something you can change when you change jobs. Does that mean if I am switching between Matte and Coated, I need to calibrate before each job to that specific paper? The only other thing I can see that I can change between jobs is the profile, but it will still use the last calibration (paper) setting I calibrated to to start with.

 

[JayDA]

You should, in most instances, be recalibrating to the paper you are using each time you switch. That Fiery does a few quirky things that you can deal with in a few different ways, send me an email or a PM with your specific situation and I can try to help you out.

 

[PrePress Gal]

Well, one job is running on Coated Offset, which is what the machine is calibrated to, and it is real heavy on the magenta. My browns are purple. I had another job, in which I had to adjust the magenta and created a new profile for that job and it was fine.

Another job with a black patterened background came out real, real dark on the coated paper until we chose plain paper as our stock in the print menu, even though the machine was calibrated for the coated paper. Then it was fine.

A couple of days ago, some jobs were coming out real saturated and today I am finding out KM had adjusted one of the tray settings to a slower speed and max density on the paper setting to satisfy the owner on a sample solid coverage job. I have yet to go and check to see what that tray is now set on, but I haven't seen any of that in the last couple of days. There are three of us running this machine.

So we should be grouping our runs as to paper type and when we switch paper, at that point re-calibrate to that paper?

 

[JayDA]

So we should be grouping our runs as to paper type and when we switch paper, at that point re-calibrate to that paper?

Yes, I guess that would be a good place to start. What are you color management settings? Are you still using the default profile?

 

[PrePress Gal]

By default, I guess, yes, I am picking one of the profiles from the list depending on the paper. I have only made one customer profile for a particular job. I have attached a screen shot.

thanks

 

[MacDaddy]

I'm no tech but have run two KM machines. One with fiery and one with Creo. Using Creo now and to tell you the truth in my experience you get some color shift by selecting different stocks but not huge. My concern would be as I understand is toner adhering to paper. Doesn't the temp change depending on stock and weight you select? I would get a good tech in and check settings.

 

[PrePress Gal]

Yes you are correct. Depending on the paper you choose, the temperature will change and also the tray speed.

Update of calibrating. According to KM rep. you should to do one calibration on uncoated and one calibration on coated paper each morning. Then when you choose either paper when you run a job, it is supposed to switch to that calibration for that paper. I have not checked to verify this though. Other places will tell you they calibrate before each job, but I guess it depends on the situation.

What we are doing right now, is calibrating each morning, and then again before running a job if the first sheet is not matching what we want. Although they are doing some color adjustments in addition.

We now have the 8000 running on a Fiery rip and the 6500 is back to using the CREO. They were both on Fiery, but for some reason they took back the one on the 6500 and set it back to CREO. I was not in the loop on this, so I don't know why. We had issues on a real heavy coverage job with transparencies and they installed a Fiery rip after discovering it would handle this job fine where the CREO did not.

 

[MacDaddy]

You will have issues with transparencies if your file is using spot colors. Say If you have a background then have text on top in spot color with an effect say drop shadow you will get a funny box showing. Just change spot to cymk and that fixes it.

 

[PrePress Gal]

I will keep that in mind. I have also had luck with setting my PDF output to a higher version of Acrobat, say v7 vs v4.. Also there area couple of things to try on output at the CREO.

Talking about funny boxes, have you tried running a VPS file to the CREO? We do this out of Fusion Pro on mail pieces. It almost always makes a black box somewhere on the piece, such as where a logo is. We end up running PDF but a lot of times that will bog the 6500 down something terrible with the CREO. The 8000, with the Fiery, never has any issues. Maybe it is the size of the rip.

 

[MacDaddy]

Also going into quality and uncheck overprint will fix a lot of funny issues.

 

[PrePress Gal]

Thanks for the tip.