Xerox DocuColor 242 - everything prints TOO dark!

[kellyjaye]

We just got a new Xerox DocuColor 242 that we are still learning but the biggest thing is that its printing way to dark. Ill print a picture of a person that looks great on screen and its way dark on paper. Ill print a non-photographic color document and all the colors come out way darker than it is on screen. I totally understand that no printer will print exactly as you will see on the screen but this is WAAAAY off! We do have a contract with Xerox for support and all that and they are helping us but Im beginning to think we are even stumping them! The same things we print on other color printers we have (or had) were not nearly this drastically different and we are just not comfortable yet to give to customers things we print on it just yet.

Everything Im referring to is from sending from a computer to the printer. Also have calibrated the screen twice, calibrated the colors on the printer several times, turned the black WAY down in the color editor which does no change in the printing, and a lot of other things I cant even remember. All this "color profiles" thing is way new to me and honestly...very confusing! I just want to send to a printer and have it look pretty much like what i expect but all this ISO and SWOP and about 100 others seems like i just have to play a guessing game each time i want to print something.

Any thoughts or ideas?

 

[bphilippi]

Re: Xerox DocuColor 242 - everything prints TOO dark!

I'd say what's happening is that you are using the wrong colour profile for the printer.

if you are designing in the SWOP colour space, then the numbers must be converted to your printers working space.

I'm not too sure about the CREO front ends but I've worked on the EFI and DocuSP RIPs before and if you set up a simulation profile in the RIP, it should work.

On the EFI (Bear with me, I'm working from memory here) you should be able to set in the queue settings a Simulation profile. Just set it to SWOP and it should come back into line with the norm. Make sure you set it to override.

As for the DocuSP, go into your default queue, in image quality tab, click advanced settings. then set your input CMYK colour space to SWOP.

doing it this way will minimize any changes you'll need to make at application level.

Another way to fix it would be to get your printers icc profile and CONVERT (assigning/tagging and converting are 2 different things) any indesign documents
(if you use it) etc to that profile.

I can liken colour corretcion to the old addage "How long is a piece of string". Once you know the answer (with icc profiles etc) you'll be fine.

I hope this was of some help. I'd maybe have a chat to your xerox analyst. they'll definitely be able to help you out.

 

[k_graham]

Re: Xerox DocuColor 242 - everything prints TOO dark!

I second that use the SWOP simulation, NONE is another possibility to pass the calibration through from application but I prefer SWOP and override at RIP.

I did however run into a couple additional problems on my 240 with Fiery.

I found doing a copier gradation adjust with high brightness 96 stock caused Fierycalibrations to be about 15% too dark eve.n with SWOP. Try with a regular 92 bright stock, ie regular copier paper.

I actually have 2 machines, one was fine the other would loose the ability to calibrate on anything but paper after a few days, so check and see if you can calibrate for anything but paper. I and Xerox reloaded the RIP software about 3 times, then they replaced drive, same problem. Finally they cloned a known good drive and its been okay since (it appears the disks I received though working were somehow flawed - they provided a new set of disks with the cloned drive.) I think this is a Fiery quality control issue, that they should be adding a checksum routine to all install disks to guarantee all are the same as they leave the factory or at least one would have a method of knowing the disks were flawed. Actually this should be the case with all software programs

Ken Graham
Community Printers.com
250-782-7108

 

[bphilippi]

Re: Xerox DocuColor 242 - everything prints TOO dark!

That sounds like a UV problem.
Check out the ICC whitepaper #14 "The Effects of flourescence in the characterization of imaging media"
Does the Spectrophotometer have a UV cut filter?
If you are making a profile for that substrate, try excluding anything below 400nm in your measurement data

Edit:
I forgot to include that for Whitening agent compensation, you would need to perform 2 measurements. One with UV excluded and one included. This would then give you the data needed to compensate for this. I'm unsure of any software packages that compensate for this other than Graeme Gill's open source Argyll cms as this is what I tend to use.

Edited by: Ben Philippi on Jul 7, 2008 7:14 PM

 

[ian]

Re: Xerox DocuColor 242 - everything prints TOO dark!

Buy an Xrite DTP 32 densitometer and you problems will be solved.. only problem is they cost a bundle

ian

 

[genomarb]

Re: Xerox DocuColor 242 - everything prints TOO dark!

I have had a Docu 250 [very similar] and I have the same problem.... basically it has to do with the double black toner.... I gave up trying to adjust from the machine, I just get out photoshop and adjust acordingly.... I also have an image adjustment in my fiery wher I can lighten a bit

hope this helps