SP300 Printing Black and Grey Shades – help?

[Mark Nihotte]

Hi Owen

We usually use japan max to get better greys, but that is with our own profile…probably worth a go though. To get true greys, we have found the only way is to convert the black and grey to greyscale and use Japan max – is sometimes a bit hit and miss if there is also colour in the print as you are trying to make the machine print conflicting processes.

[OwenTaylor]

Hi Mark, thanks for the reply. The greys arent really true greys, they are cool greys 5% C with various % K. There is also a small logo on the print with colour in it so I need to print full colour.

I’ll try japan max and see how that works out.

Does anyone know if there is a way of printing twice in the same place – say create two files one with the greys/colours in it and one with the black and print using a different profile for each?

Thanks, Owen

[Adrian Yeo]

Hi there. there was a thread in the Uniform section a while back about replacing spot colours. Seems to do the trick! 😀

have a read

http://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=24051

[OwenTaylor]

Thanks for the link!

Ok i made sure that black printed as 100% black using the ‘special colors’ feature in Versaworks and I managed to get a more solid, true black which is great!

The black is still not as dense as I would really like – which is what I get from the US MAX setting. It’s just a shame that the colours/greys come out so terribly grainy. Has anyone else had this problem with grainy colours on any profile?

[Chris Wool]

what res are you riping the file at as that has i direct affect on the output also the number of printing passes.

chris

[OwenTaylor]

Hi Chris,

I’m ripping at high quality 720×1440

[Gavin MacMillan]

I’m having a mess with this just now but…

when I export a file (eps) from corel using 2 rgb colours the ‘convert special colour’ box is not highlighted. I’ve set them up as per the versaworks help guide…

Any clues?

[OwenTaylor]

you have to create a special colour setting first.

Edit>special colour settings

then just save your file somewhere and click ok. you might have to re open the file with versaworks to get the option to work. then just click ‘details’ select your special setting and check the box.

[Gavin MacMillan]

Hi Owen,

I’ve done that but it’s still not happening. On the plus side I’ve found another way to do it from the signlab website, my head’s fried but I’m just about to print a job I need for Monday!

G

[David Crocker]

Hi there,

Why dont you use the Density Control setting in Colour Management…

You’re using Versaworks yes?

cheers
Dave

[Peter Normington]

if you have no colours to print, why not just bypass the icc output?
that way the rip will just print with black?
dont know if I’m right, but thats how I did my Breadstall print, which was a greyscale tiff,

[Simon Polakof]

Hi!
I thought just occurred to me as I was reading the different post. What is that you mean by the black not coming as dense as you would like? We used to have that problem before but did the spotcolor replacement in the rip and now things work perfectly! My thought was that it may depend on the fact that you are using a mat media and thus will never look as dense as it does on say a coated print media. Try printing the same job on a piece of coated media and see what different results you get.

[Stephen Morriss]

I’ve just had a similar problem with an rgb image that I added a black outline to in Corel.
I then exported it to eps and when printed the rgb image black was very dense black while the vector outline black was more like a dark grey.
It wasn’t a problem in this case as it was just to allow for the cut outline being slightly off but it may be a problem later if I’m trying to match the black in an image.

They both looked the same on the rip screen, Roland Colorip.

Steve