There are some settings in AVA which you can adjust to help bring your digital prints closer to your production prints. If adjusting the basic settings does not get you close enough, please refer to the Production Colour Management articles. Alternatively, please contact AVA Technical Support to discuss this further.

Getting the linearisation and printer profile right.

If you are working with a printer which AVA can drive, then getting the ink setting right is obviously critical.

For PCM we would recommend using a 3012 profile. If the CAD printer is printing on the production substrate you may need to look at smoothing in the profile to make sure your white point is the same as the paper.

You need to do accuracy tests.  In gamut colours should be 2 dE or less (you could test with a smaller profile to see if it is more or less accurate. 

Changing the transparency of your layers

Individual layer transparencies can be altered so that the simulated opacity of the print can be adjusted if necessary.

Changes to layer transparency are shown in real time and you can select more than one layer at once if you wish. If you select multiple layers with differing transparencies at the same time, a message will be displayed in the Transparency Window to tell you this.

Soft proofing to a production profile

Set your gamut warnings to a third party profile such as your production gamut by going to the AVA Menu > Settings > Overprint. You will need to tick 'Soft Proofing and Printer Gamut Warnings Profile' and drag the profile into this box. When a profile is set in here, your gamut warnings will be specific to this profile, and not the profile set in the AVA CMS Controller.

Working with a dot gain

A Dot Gain curve must be set up in order to reproduce the effect of ink loss or gain in production. For example, when printing from a cylinder, you may find that an 80% area of tone looks exactly the same as a 100% area of tone. To compensate for this, you would set the 80% tone level to 100% in the Dot Gain Window. This would darken the design on screen, thus simulating the finished output from the press.

A Dot Gain can also be used to simulate the loss in strength of the ink printed off the cylinder. For example, the layer colour can be set to 100% tone and the design can be toned down to 80%, showing the final print from the press. 

Dot Gain curves can be applied in tow ways: are applied in the Dot Gain Preference Window. They come in two forms:

• Global Dot Gain - is applied in the Dot Gain Settings and affects all designs in AVA
• Individual Dot Gains - can be applied to any selected layers in the design