Printing from Corel Draw on VersaCamm

[Rodney Gold]

Gert , the best way is to design in Corel and use EPS to colorip.
For a better idea of what you see is what you get , you would have to have your system colour calibrated , but you will get a far closer representation if you go to colour management in corel and set it to emulate professional printed output , your screen colours will be far more accurate to whats going to get printed.
the rip itself has various intents etc , and if you want to learn more about the RIP and how its settings affect your colours , go to
http://www.wasatch.com/digigrafix.html

We have printed a colour chart which gives us various cmyk combos and the ACTUAL colour it prints and thus can match up when we want specific colours or vibrancies etc
http://www.rolanddga.com/rnet30/files/s … pchart.exe

Apart from that , the RIP itself has an excellent help section well worth reading and there are forums and all manner of other support documents for the rip at rolands site
http://www.rolanddga.com/ , join the inkijet forum there.

[Gert du Preez]

I do export everything as EPS

[lulu51]

Hi,

For good results

Edit > queueA or QueueB

Coreldraw > export EPS Poscript 3

if Preserve Primary Color=true : Good yellow

Lucien

[Gert du Preez]

Thanks everyone. Will see if I can learn more on the suggested site. As point of interest, I also printed out a colour chart. This still has 2 sides – one printed from RIP, the other from Corel. Frustrating when 1 colour matches the RIP output, and another the Corel output!
Biggest problem is blue – in RIP most mixes on my chart prints as a blueish gray

[lulu51]

Uses you it good profile ICC of the vinyl?

Lucien

[Gert du Preez]

Lucien

I use the profiles as set up by the guy who intalled the machine. (Clear vinyl, White, Reflective, PVC etc) The coulours output the same regardless
Will experiment with the info you guys gave as soon as the shop is a bit quiter. [/quote]

[lulu51]

Sorry, but if you use generic profiles, the results will be average
If not why the manufacturers of vinyl provide profiles?

Test: 4 rectangles, black 100%, yellow 100%, cyan 100% magenta 100%

The job corel always CMJN

Corel version ? limit 2500 mm 😥
Corel 12 = 45720 mm

Versacamm : température 42 degres Centigrade, dry 46/50
Eco solvant or eco solvant Max ?

Roland colourRip >
You have versaworks provided with the tracer?

lucien

[Checkers]

Hiya Gert,
Are you using Corel’s generic CMYK and RGB color pallets when you assign color to a design? Or, are you using the PMS color pallets?
Either way, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and learn a lot about ICC profiling and how to use it correctly. It’s not difficult, but it can be confusing.

Checkers
a.k.a. Brian Born
Harrisburg, PA USA

[Simon.Johnson]

A tip for everyone using Corel Draw with a Roland printer running ColoRIP or Wasatch SoftRIP or TROOP who wants to match some Pantone colours from any of the Corel Pantone palletes.

Skipping all the science and detail, select the Pantone colour you need in Corel Draw as normal, now before you close the colour picker, note that Corel by default gives you the CMYK and RGB values for this colour. At the bottom of the colour selector tool next to the OK button is an options drop down menu. Click on this and change either value 1 or value 2 to "Lab". You can now see the LaB value for the Pantone colour you have selected (make a note of this value). Open the job in the RIP and use the spot colour replacement tool to change the input value (which will be CYMK if you output an EPS from CorelDraw) to the LaB values you noted. This will now use your output profile to make the colour match and, as if your profile is good, it should be very close. If you have doubts about whether the colour is printable, simply select the "info" tab from the options on the left hand side of the RIP window and hover over the colour on the screen. The "info" window will now give you the original input colour, the CMYK ink levels for the out put and below this a gamut alarm which will tell you if the colour is printable. Numbers in Red would be out of gamut and no amount of tweeking will make these colours print.( A value of around 4 in these number would be a litho quality colour match).

If your interested, this works because LaB values for a colour are device independent and so can transfer to any output device and potentially match if you have the right mapping software.

This is the short version of this explanation – if you don’t know how to use the spot colour replacement tool correctly within the RIP, I will be happy to explain this in more detail but it would be a long post.

[Gert du Preez]

Thanks all for making the effort to reply. What Simon Johnson said make kinda sense. I may have to take you up on your offer, but lemme see if I can figure it out on my own first. That way I’m sure to remember.We,ve been hellishly busy recently, but should have some thumb twiddeling days between X-mast and New Year. I will play around with the various suggestions made, and see if I can get to the bottom of this. Will run a post in a month or so detailing the results, Maybe useful to other blokes fairly new (and self trained!) in digi print.

[Jennifer Metituk]

Hi there

I am a die hard Corel user. But since buying the Versacamm I have come to realize that when it comes to colour output the dreaded "ai" seems to be better.

I have had it explained to me that the Corel colour management is Kodak and AI is Adobe and they have a different way of handling colour. We try to keep AI created files out of Corel to maintain the colours. Their colour gamut is wider and can push our machines farther. I have seen some brilliant colours out of our machine and they have NEVER come from our Corel Files.

Some times we have been able to import from Corel and get OK colours using the Pantone palettes….

The Reds, Blues get muddy and washed out don’t they?
I printed a test out of ai and out of corel of the same pantone and they are different.

Honestly we have AI just for this reason. I was tired of putting out prints that were as vibrant as they could have been.

Jen

[Gert du Preez]

Hi, Jen

I seem to get the more vibrant colours when printing from Corel. The problem is that I,m limited in length of output, and my computer "hangs" when files get big. Also, (small) text has inferior quality.
Photos taken from my digital camera print PERFECTLY from Corel, but exported as "ai" and printed from ColoRip the colours are washed out, grey-blueish type of thing. As promised, I will experiment a bit, and keep you posted on the (lack of ??) outcome.

[Alan Drury]

Problems with colour from Corel usually stem from incorrect settings in the colour manager.
I have the colour space as Adobe rgb 1998, this point to the separations printer which is Euroscale coated.
Central colour space also points to monitor (use monitor profile if you have one I use a Huey and that works ok)
You can turn off colour management for imported or exported files, see arrows top left from central colour space.
Nothing goes to or from my cmyk printer.
These are just my settings for mainly litho work, experimenting here may yield more satifactory results as most of you have the benefit of having a printer in front of you.
Regarding X3 and Illustrator, there is a free macro at http://www.oberonplace.com which enables cut and paste between Illy and Draw, users who use both programmes may find this useful when comparing colours quickly without imort/export.
Alan D