Hello,
I am hoping someone can help me out. I run a little print shop as part of our Charity and we produce T-shirts, sublimation mugs and coasters as well as some paper based goods.
I've read a lot about colour management but I'd like some advice on the best way to to set up to print to our postscript printers (one OKI 821 & a Ricoh 820DN)
Currently I have the default workspace set to CMYK, sRGB & coated Fogra39 profiles, colour engine as WCS, preserve black off and the rest as defaults.
My question is how to set up for printing to postscript? I've read that this is best for colour accuracy and allows for different colour spaces with in the same document. We print a lot of cards for local artists whose images are edited in Photoshop and output as srgb jpegs. We then import these into corel and add writing using the standard CMYK palette.
At the moment when we print we have corel set to manage colours, output colours as native as there is a combination of of RGB & CMYK elements. Within the printer driver we set either CM off or ICM managed by host, depending on the driver.
Is this correct? I did have a thought that this combination may mean that effectively there is no colour management happening at all!?! It is useful for us to keep the jpegs as RGB because some customers will require their artwork on sublimation items as well which require transfers being produced on a non-postscript device. For these we use a sublimation ICC profile and a PCL driver and it works well.
With postscript I have found that outputting the file as cmyk rather than native dulls the image considerably. However, using native output gives different results from both of our printers...
Any advice would be welcome!
Matt
Hi Matt,
You can find detailed description of PostScript color management in CorelDraw X5-X6 here Color Management guide ( PDF ).
Gennady
Thanks Gennady, I have read the manual that you sent before, in fact in sits on my desk as we speak. I based my colour settings around the postscript printing chapter...
"You can have RGB, CMYK, Grayscale and LAB colours in the same document with exactly defined color spaces, making accurate color reproduction much easier. Selecting Native from Output colors as list box on the color page will ensure document colors will be output as is; there will be no conversion from CMYK to RGB and vice versa..."
My question is what do I set in the driver? At the moment I choose ICM controlled by host. I wanted Corel to control color as the manual says this is inherently more reliable
Chec2013 said:At the moment when we print we have corel set to manage colours, output colours as native as there is a combination of of RGB & CMYK elements. Within the printer driver we set either CM off or ICM managed by host, depending on the driver
I have studied PS driver based work flows for many years and my experience is this, I cannot give you any relevant advice without seeing captures of the printer dialogs as well as advanced driver settings.
Some drivers allow you to internally select assumed color spaces as the source space converting to the media profile. If you're sending RGB data this had better be the case.
Many do not allow any selection and the conversion needs to handled by the application. Can't tell without a look.
Hi David,
Thanks for replying, I was hoping you might help! You seem to be the CM guru on here! I've taken some screen shots of corel and the drivers.
Corel settings are as follows: FYI we are in the UK.
Now for the Ricoh Driver settings. This is how it is currently set up.
Now for the OKI - The following shots are the settings we use, largely to mimick the Ricoh...
For this printer there is also a graphic pro setting (see screen shots below). This is not something we've dabbled in partly because there is no reference to it in the manual.
I hope that this helps you to point me in the right direction David! As I said above, in an ideal world, id like to keep our images in RGB so that we can sublimate if we need to from the same image, whilst keeping the colours intact.
Thanks
Ok first thing, make notes and even print screen captures of your setting used when you print to attach to you test prints so you can keep track of what you've done.
In my opinion I would attempt to change your process from CorelDRAW handling the conversion process to the device handling the conversion process. In the color tab of the Corel print dialog I would have the device handle the conversions.
In both devices I would have the ICC or ICM handled by the printer. The graphics pro seems set to that already.
Set all input ICC or ICM profiles to match the document ICC profiles in CorelDRAW. Allow an automatic selection of the output profile as the device picks one for the media selected.
The RICOH I would keep the CMYK simulation off.
THE KEY!!!! Is to create captures of the settings, and keep them attached to the test prints so you can properly keep track of the results then when you find a setting that works you can reset it when needed.
If memory serves I believe Adobe uses the device to convert color by default.
Thanks David, I'll give it a try...
If I do use the device to manage colour am I not opening myself up to problems in the future if the printer is upgraded to another make/model?
In my opinion no as long as you do as instructed an keep your records, you can return to any setting in the future. With that said you can't expect to downgrade the printer and get good results.
The reason I say it's most likely ok is that if the device recognizes your CorelDRAW color settings and converts to the media profile properly you'll get the widest gamut possible. If you upgrade you'll either get equal or improved capability or even a true RIP which again will provide proper conversion from the CorelDRAW input profiles to the media profile.
I think the issue you're seeing is tat CorelDRAW id providing you with a proper CMYK conversion.
Just remember this process may not work so keep you screen captures so you can return to the status quo if needed.
Thanks David. I gave it a go today setting the printer (ricoh) to manage the colours in Corel and the driver. The RGB bitmap looked great, no darkening at all, in fact much the same is it did before when I'd set corel to output colours as native and the printer was set to CM managed by host.
One funny thing did happen though. The black text which is set to k100 black, printed out as a CMY black, so the printer must not have recognised it as true black..