Help with CMYK Setup in Arizona 180 printer

[joserijo]

The Arizona Allows you tu put it in CMYK mode (in the field service menu), although you have to move ink supply positioning, so it would be reasonable to think there is a profile or a way out there to configure postershop 5 to print colors ok.

[Jon Aston]

Why on earth would you want to print in CMYK only?

[Steve Madley]

Why on earth not?

Sorry Joserijo, I don’t have a clue about Arizona’s or the software you are using, is this a RIP package?

[Rodney Gold]

Jon , all digital printers print CMYK , some allow extra inks , like OG or light Cyan and Light magenta to make a better colour gamut.
CMYK can only actually print 7 colours (CMYK C+M, C+Y, M+Y) , adding extras increase that , the printers work in zillions of colours cos of halftone technique that that use coupled with overprinting , variable dots etc. You cant print RGB as its a colour space printers cant emulate

[joserijo]

I’m doing these for economic reasons. My company is in a very bad state and a want to sacrifice some color gammut and save some bucks. Also the price for the print heads in my country is US$925.00 each.

Yes, Postershop is a RIP suite (and a very nice one). You can check it at http://www.onyxgfx.com.

I just want to set Postershop to work properly in CMYK with an Arizona for my company, and I know if I do it right, maybe my clients wont notice the difference, in some time.

[Jon Aston]

Gents:

The ARIZONA 180 printer in question is a six colour (CMYKcm) printer that employs something called ColorBlend technology.

Contrary to popular belief, the addition of light cyan and light magenta do NOT increase colour gamut. What they do (using ColorBlend) is facilitate smoother transitions from highlight areas of the image; facilitating greatly improved overall print quality. Choosing to print without them will only lead to reduced print quality.

Eliminating light cyan and light magenta from the print routine will NOT reduce printing costs — which I assume is Joserijo’s objective — because the ARIZONA 180 only ever prints cyan OR light cyan and magenta OR Light magenta at any given time.

Reduced print quality with no benefit…hence the question “Why on earth would you want to print in CMYK only?”

[joserijo]

Jon,

You’re right, the Arizona employs Colorblend technology wich “uses the light cyan and light magenta channels to create a smoother appearance in the light and midtone colours, a wider colour gamut and crisper detail. The result is near-photographic quality output without the requirement of extremely high resolution or true continuous tone”. You should SEE this machine at work, it does wonders, but also uses three print heads per channel, giving it a total of 18 print heads to print in CMYKcm.

When I configured it to work with four colors I put six very expensive heads out of work, wich I can use later when the heads in use are worn out. I want advice on how to configure my program in order to accept this new machine configuration, not question why I did this. I know why I did it.

[swagg_man]

I have two arizona 180’s
& I must say don’t listen to these other guys.They don’t run in cmyk because they don’t know how. It saves money & your prints will look better, alot more vibrant. & you will save a grip of cash on inks.all you have to do is, go into your postershop printer configuration & set your printer setting at CMYKSS which allows you to choose if you want to use a spot color ( lt cyan or lt mag.) you have to do nothing else your software should automatically print cmyk without using the lt’s unless you tell it to. You will however have to keep a supply of ink or solvent in your dead juice boxes, that way your machine doesn’t try to keep pumping ink into those boxes.
Good luck !

[David Rowland]

just to add, I have access to a JV3-75SP (running CMYK & Shiraz) and a JV3-160S (running in CMYKcm), the 6 colour hi-fi prints a fuller range without a doubt, the CMYK is just typical CMYK (slight dull). They are both have great outputs but I can certainly see the difference.

I guess the Arizona 180 doesn’t have a good colour range.