Stuck in the caldera transitions module...

[ogetsu]

I use efi fiery XF at work, but swung by a friends business last night with my i1Publish kit to help him build a few profiles for his new setup. I forget the exact model number, but it was an HP laytex printer driven by Caldera VisualRIP.

I fired up EasyMedia, and right out of the gate I got hung up on the cyan strip for ink transitions. It was asking me to verify each pass as I read each primary strip, but it kept complaining about deviations on verification. The dark inks read without a problem, so I went back and just manually adjusted the transitions and moved on to linearization (one and done, no issues). After that came ink limiting, and the inks were bleeding like mad. I went from 400% to 350% to 320% to 280%, and nothing changed. I then dropped the global ink limit from 400 to 320% and still nothing. I gave up and told him I'd need to look into it and come back another time.

Was I doing something wrong? I've profiled media using Profilemaker, Onyx ProductionHouse, EFi Fiery XF, and i1Profiler without any issues.

It didn't help that I couldn't find any documentation.

Any pointers or help?

Thanks!

 

[nirupakah]

hi, it is done a bit differently in caldera...
first, the global ink limit has a completely different meaning from what you are used to elswhere, it has nothing to do with "total area coverage" (TAC) or "rich black" and it can easily have a value 60...
so, when you print targets in the transitions step, do the patches in higher values bleed (are they very wet)? if so, you need to activate ink clipping and lower the values so that the targets do not bleed; when you have some experience in it, you will be able to set those values in advance for some types of media; what I always do is activate the ink clipping and set the values to 100 for each ink and 100 global, because the black dividning bars in some teargets are made of composite black and they practically always bleed...
now the easymedia can determine the "correct" values for you after reading the targets, sometimes it works (on a photoprinter for example), sometimes not so well (on an acosolvent printer for example) and you need to set it manually; again, you need some experience here and every printer will be different; I have never profiled an HP latex printer so I cannnot say into which group it would fall, I would bet "the easier ones" though... so try to go with the values caldera computes for you.
also, it is a very good idea to download a completed profile for some media and inpect it so that you see what kind of values you might expect to set up for certain types of media; however, be careful to make any harsh generalisations, if you change a print mode, the values will not necessarily be the same or even very similar.
now the next step is linearization; if you had se up ink clipping, keept the settings (caldera does this actually for you), measure the target; you get the curves and there are values called Pmax - write those down and mark the two hihgest of them.
now you should set up the in limit - this is where caldera truly differs form other RIPs; in the in clipping, set the values for the individual inks i bit higher than the Pmax values you got (if you have for the cyan the Pmax = 78,9, set the clipping of the cyan on 85 - I usually set it 5 units higher and also I usually round the Pmax values, e.g. here it would be 78...); the global value of the in clippinf has to be twice as much as the sum of the two highest Pmax, again set it up a bit higher than this sum. if the previous steps were set correctly, you can expect the ink limit to be around tha value you set in the global in clipping - let us call this value EIL ("expected ink limit")
now print the ink limit target and inspect it; if it is very wet or "grainy" around the EIL, than your media is not able to hold that much ink and you will have to go back to linearisation or even transitions and lower the values...

there is a manual for easy media (available on the caldera usernet, http://usernet.caldera.com), quite a long read... there are some tricks that we cannot really go into here and that you can only gain by experience or from someone experienced in this...

 

[nirupakah]

a note on the measuring: what device are you using to measure? I assume you are measuring by hand since when using automated systems there are no messages about deviations
caldera enabels you to set up your preferences for the measurng, for exapmle whether each strip should be measured twice
when you get the message about the deviations, usually measurung the strip again helps, if not, measure it again in the same direction as the first reading was done, be also careful to watch for scratches on the target from measuring, this may cause the readings to deviate one from each other...

 

[ogetsu]

Thanks for this! I don't own the Caldera RIP software, so I've passed this off to my friend so he could register and grab the manual.

I did notice streaks from initial passes on the swatches, and assumed that could be the reason for the misread verification pass, but wasn't sure how to turn it off. This was very helpful. Thank you.