Uncoated Colour Curves

[Print Manic]

Dear Sirs,
I was wondering if anyone could recommend a publication or article which explains how to set up colour curves for uncoated stocks ?
Many thanks

 

[ffstoney]

chirp chirp. . . all I hear are crickets, either this is a really HOT button nobody wants to touch or there is nothing to talk about. Good thing this discussion was in the email teaser. . .

 

[Dan DeSimoni]

are you talking about plate curves for an uncoated press stock ?

 

[tcollins]

Hi Print Manic
there really isn;t any documentation that I know of but there are 2 ways to do this.

The option is to get a test form from your Press manufacturing company(Heidelberg,komori) and what you need to do is print that test form to the densities your Printroom wants to run the desities at using linear plates making sure that the Greys are neurtral and even. From the test form there should be colour swatches to get DOT GAIN or TVI figures to enter into your plate curve, the target figure you will need to get from your Press manufacturer and they should be able to guide you. From that point you then apply the Dot Gain curve to your plates and run a second print test on the same stock and to the same densities, from this printed sheet there should be some kind of swatch to create an ICC profile for your Proofers to use.

The Second option is to contact Mellow Colour and get them to come out and explain to you how they can come in and give you a range of options for them to do this for you, or you can do what I did, I got Mellow Colour to give me a full solution for about 30 thousand for platereaders, Print readers and software to manage and check to give us fead back from the presses and to make sure the proofs are calibrated to match the printes sheet so the client is more confident of the proofs they are getting as well as the printers being confident in the proofs they need to match.

Hope this helps you, as there is not a lot of documentation on how to do this, you need to get a Press manufafturer involved to help you or get an outside company like Mellow Colour to come in as an independent supplier to set you up and help in anyway they can.

 

[gordo]

Dear Sirs,
I was wondering if anyone could recommend a publication or article which explains how to set up colour curves for uncoated stocks ?
Many thanks

This will give you the basics of building curves: Quality In Print: The principle of dot gain compensation plate curves

The only difference for uncoated stocks would be in determining the highest density that you can run to and still maintain printability.

best, gordon p

 

[Print Manic]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I'll look into this in more detail.

 

[turbotom1052]

i think its important to further define an uncoated stock. we were using 2 different sets of curves for uncoated. one curve was for your basic offset sheet like cougar or a lettersheet. then there were another set of curves for a smooth surfaced and hard surfaced calendered sheet like mowhawk superfine or like a monodonock dulcet curves for this type of paper we were close to the curves of a dull coated sheet.