My i1 spectrophotometer will not self calibrate

• Make sure it is sitting properly on the white calibration tile.
• Ensure the white calibration tile is not dirty or marked.
• If you are using the old i1Pro2 instrument, make sure the lens cap is on the instrument correctly and hasn’t been left in the monitor calibrator equipment.

How can I change my default colour picker?

Click on the ColourSys Menu > Settings > Colour Picker and choose your desired picker.

*valid = made within the last month

Matching an HP 3000 to a 600 or 360

Assuming the HP 3000 is printing at 8 Pass (a common setting), then you should set the HP 360 to print at 12 pass, and the HP 600 to 6pass. These settings will ensure a similar dot simulation is printed from each printer.

Using the Scitex ink setting, profile each printer and the match between to two should be within commercial tolerances. Here is the official documentation that HP give to their customers to help tackle this problem.

Objective

Make the HP 360 print closer to the HP 3000 and LX 600. The main issue with the prints from the 360 was the red. The 3000 achieved deeper reds.  

Work done

The ink limit was being reduced to 70% for the substrate in question.  A new ink settings with 100% ink limit on this substrate, and a new profile brought the red much closer to the 3000.  Still not as deep, but closer.

The trouble is, now you get more green on the 360 than the 3000, so the concern was clients will see a proof print of colours that they cannot get in production. However it was still better to be able to get the red. The designers will now colour with the HP 3000 profile set in the AVA CMS Controller, then switch to the profile for the HP 360 to print. They generally have less greens in prints than reds, so this way around is better for them.

Resolving metamerism on an MS printer

Metamerism occurs when the two colours appear to be identical under one light source but different under another light source. This phenomenon is mainly caused by the variations in pigments, dyestuff or materials.

Digital prints are being done overseas on am MS printer with various types of ink. A test file was sent to various mills, and the resulting prints looked good in a light box, but bad in 'shop' lighting. 

Question

When digitally printing, can you control how many inks are used to make colours?

Answer

This is controlled in the linearisation, and you normally use a triangle of colours, but you can use CMY inks in the grey ramp, so in these cases you are using 4 or more colours.

It is possible that the MS printer is using double black instead of a grey ink, while the TX2 does have a grey ink.  This means the grey ramp in the ink setting will use the grey and black inks, and not CMY.  Doing this will result in less issues with metamerism.

When mixing colours for screen printing it is common to use the one with less inks as it would have less metameric issues. With digital printing the mills will probably use CMY instead of black in the grey tones to get a nicer dither. They may also put CMY under the black to get a deeper black, or to make the black more neutral, but this will cause metamerism issues, meaning the prints will only match well in D65, whereas, if you use a grey ink you will not have the problem.  You could also just use the black ink to create the grey ramp but you will have worse dither in the prints.

All my layer colours are in gamut, but the printout does not match my screen

If you have overprinting colours in your design, the resulting colour (the mixed colour of all overprinting colours in that area) can be out of gamut.  So, despite all the individual colours being in gamut - the overprinting areas can be out of gamut.

To check this, you can switch on the Design Gamut Warnings in the Warnings Inspector.

Why can’t I move or edit my colour palette in the Layout Window?

This is because Basic Editing is active. Basic Editing is a function which can be added to the toolbar and essentially turns off nodes on associated objects such as the colour palette, colourway names and numbers. This in part groups those associated objects to the colourway view, temporarily disabling the editing of these objects.

To toggle this on and off, select Basic Editing from the Layout Menu:

Also, check the palette is not locked to the page by clicking on it. If the nodes are red, it is locked. To unlock it, open the Inspector from the toolbar and click the ruler tab. Then uncheck the locked box.

Turning off colour management on Epson SureColour printers

Problem

We had attempted to profile twice, but could not understand why our prints were colour managed.  This meant that we were getting a smaller gamut than we should and the accuracy was not as good as it could be.

Solution

The profile we were getting looked like this:

We tried a profile with Epson Photo Quality Inkjet paper at 720 dpi but this gave worse results.

Another problem was there was too much ink going down. This was causing the paper to cockle and causing regular paper jams.  The media was set to Singleweight Matte and the print resolution set to 360 dpi.  We tried using the US driver, but this made no difference.

We noticed that under the ColorSync® setting in the driver there was no profile for Singleweight Matte paper.  For matte paper there was only profiles for Enhanced Matte and Archival Matte.  

We created a printer pre-sent for Archival Matte 720dpi and set the printer preset to Archival Matte and profiled (with AVA Manager Colour ticked).  We noticed the print was much better.

It was clear the new profile was  putting down less ink despite printing at 720 dpi (the old profile was 360dpi) and the gamut was significantly larger and the reading were more balanced so it should be more accurate.  Below the gamut shape is the old profile and dots reflect the new profile:

Test prints with the new profile were good, therefore, anyone printing to an Epson SureColour printer  should use Enhanced Matte or Archival Matte as a media setting in the Printer Settings (you do not have to use this particular paper, but it is advisable).

Colour match is not good between my screen and print out

More often than not, the simplest things will be the cause of the problem. That is why it is always important to start by checking the basics first.

• Perform a head test to confirm all the heads on the printer are working as expected?  How you do this varies between different printer models so you may need to refer to the manufacturer's documentation on how to do this.
• Check that the correct printer profile set in the AVA CMS Controller for the printer you are printing to.
• Check that you are using the correct printer preset / printer settings, these should be the same as when profile was made.
• How old is your printer profile? If the match has suddenly gone off then an old profile is probably not the cause, it doesn't mean we could not recommend reprofiling. If the match has not been good for some time, then we would recommend re-profiling.
• Check that the Rendering in the AVA CMS Controller is set to Best.
• Overprint setting in AVA, should be set to Reflectance 3 or 16 (unless using a custom Overprint), Soft Proof  should be ON.

• How long has the colour match been off and more importantly what has changed in your setup in this time?
• Has the substrate changed, do you have a new batch of media?
• In what way is the match off, I.e., is the print brighter than the screen... how the match is off can help indicate what is wrong, for example if the print bright but too washed out it could indicate that the printer settings are incorrect.
• Has the room lighting changed recently.
• If you have a new display or new Mac® the display will need to be calibrated.
• Is the match good / bad on other AVA systems, if the match is only poor on your system you need to start looking what is different to others, using the list above should help with this.

Is it time to re-profile the printer and display?

We understand that this can seem like a lengthy process but it is often necessary.  We do generally recommend profiling standard printers around once a month to help keep your prints consistent.  The profile is like a finger print of the printer, so even if you don't end up using the new profile it can often be the fastest way to identify what the problem is.  See some examples below.

	The profile to the left is from a new Epson, this is correct / typically of how the profile shape 'should' look in Printer cal.
	This is from the same printer, but there was either a measurement error or something wrong with the print or printer, it could be that the light cyan head is not working well, this would give many colour issues. The target should be re-measured, you could just read the target again, if you get the same result, reprint the target and read again (after running a head test).
	This profile is from an Epson where colour management was on.  While AVA's Colour matching would work in this state it will mean you will be getting a smaller gamut than you potentially could, it will mean you will struggle to print dark tones and possibly have problems matching older CAD prints, if older prints were done with better settings.

If you have gone through the above and are not sure what to do next, please contact AVA Technical Support and we will help you further.  We may request that you run accuracy tests on your print.  This helps to determine whether the problem is with the printer, display or room lighting.

My design is printing with tone in the background

Decision Tree

Set your substrate to AVA Printing White. AVA Printing White can be found in the default ‘AVA Colourfile’ in ColourSys and can be dragged and dropped into the substrate chip on the layers palette.

Does this resolve the problem?

• Yes
• No
• Add Button

Check you don't have information in the background. This can be done using the info window (Window Menu > Info) and clicking on the design with the pipette tool. If there is no information, your layer values will be 0. If there is information please try cleaning this and printing again. 

Did this resolve the problem?

• Yes
• No
• Add Button

Do you have the AVA Colourfile open in ColourSys? This is important as the AVA Printing White chip is linked directly to the substrate chip. 

Does opening this resolve the problem?

• Yes
• No
• Add Button

If you are printing an image does the image layer have a profile tagged to it? 

If not, please try holding ^ (control key) and tagging either an sRGB or Adobe® 1998 profile. 

Does this resolve the problem?

• Yes
• No
• Add Button

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Please contact AVA Technical Support for further assistance.