New Set up

[prepress dictator]

Hello! I am planning on setting up an Epson 9900. Can anyone give me some suggestion's on how to set up some color management, rips, etc. This will be for a pre press house. We will be wanting to match a Gracol standard and probably want to match various printers profiles. Thanks!

 

[Correct Color]

If you're serious about doing this and want to do it correctly, and don't have a good solid grounding in all the ins and outs of RIPs, device profiling and device profiling software, and digital color management, you'll save yourself a ton of time, irritation, and--yes--money, by hiring a professional to put it all together for you and explain why and how it all works.

Someone such as, ohhhhh...myself, for instance.


Mike Adams
Correct Color

 

[michaelejahn]

Like Mike Adams, I guess I am a little curious who you purchased this from, and wonder if you need dots, and also, if you need the dots that are like the ones you might send if you were delivering 1 bit TIFF files.

For example - in cases such as that, we sell Star Proof, and assume you can create screened / trapped files (do you make plates for printers, or do you make trapped plate ready files and send them ?)

I would need to know a bit more about what you do and how you do it - do you own a spectophotmeter and have you ever made a profile before ?

 

[prepress dictator]

I have fingerprinted a press before. It has been a while though. So I am trying to brush up on my color management. Our epson was set up with a profile that was made by a vendor and sent back to us. From the press sheets provided. This current situation is at different place the 9900 is not purchased yet. I want to be able to hit a gracol or swap target of course. I am only making color proofs no dots no plates. I do not have a spectophotmeter. I see the epson has one built onto it. Please advise. I have not set up a printer of this magnitude from scratch.

Thanks

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Would depend on your total workflow. You probably want a RIP and an APPE v2 at that, but really depends on your printer. We had a different RIP for out film and proofer some years back and it was scary to see that the results could differ. When we moved to Agfa workflow we therefore decided to use the Apogee proofer workflow. Also if you can get hold of press sheets measuring proofer sheets and press sheets with the same instrument may give you better results.

 

[yk_chin86]

well, i think i am in the same situation as you. We just purchasing a new Epson 9900 which is due to arrive next week. We had a 3 years old Epson 9800 running which is bad maintenaned and poor color management.

What should i do step by step for my new Epson 9900?

Advise and help is much appreciated.

 

[Johu]

Most of my experience is with ORIS Color Tuner rip. It can run the Epson X900 series nicely. Color Tuner is easy to configure. It can use either ICC-profiles or raw measured data as a target. It also uses iterative color profiling so the resulting proofs are very accurate, provided that the proof substrate is well suited for the target. The new version has a nice web interface with unlimited clients and is able to do also color corrected soft proofs if needed (needs acrobat std or pro to create softproofs).

You can check more about it in here

 

[yk_chin86]

Dear Johu,

thank for the advise. Currently we are using Kodak Prinergy in our workflow and StarProof V.5. What should i do with these software?

 

[Johu]

Well I don't know star proof, but I assume that it uses ICC-profiles for color matching. So you should have your target profile which could for example be fogra 39 (Isocoated v2) for coated paper. On the printer side I assume that Star proof has some sort of linearization possibility + you probably need to set your maximum ink%. Be very careful with these as the system assumes that your printer is linear when it interpolates color values that are not on your profile chart. The next thing to do is print a color chart with the linearized printer, measure that in order to create a printer profile. If you do not have a profiling software you should contact somebody who has. You can use Profilemaker from X-rite to measure the chart provided that you have measuring instrument that is supported by Profile maker. Then you can send the measured data to somebody who has the necessary software + license and have him/her mail the calculated profile back to you.

Then you choose your proof and target profile in star proof and have a go

This is as good as I can explain this with out knowing the software and what measure instruments you may or may not have.

OOPS,
I forgot the workflow side. Depending on the input capabilities of Star Proof and what output licenses you have on your Kodak system you can send TIFF, 1-bit TIFF, postscript or PDF files to your proofer. The most secure file format of course is the 1-bit TIFF since they would be the exact same files as what you put on your plate/film, BUT they might not be the prettiest looking proofs depending on the proofer rip capabilities. I mostly use composite TIFFs for 4-color print jobs or even separated contone TIFFs for spot color jobs. But this comes down to the input and output capabilites of your workflow and proofer rip. You are pretty safe to use PDFs IF both your workflow and proofer rip have the same version of APPE. But even then I have seen different outputs depending on resolution, but this is very very rare.