Matching film produced jobs

[cptucson]

We recently went CTP with a Screen/Trueflow setup. We're very happy for the most part.

The problem is: We have customers that do "re-run with changes" of jobs that were originally produced with Computer to Film. Using the same file does not produce the same results on CTP. I am guessing that there was dot gain in the plate burning when using the film and CTP is giving me a cleaner, more honest reproduction.

All of us in prepress, however, know the story of "I don't care why, fix it. I want it to look like THIS."

Any ideas on how to make a CTP job look like it did when printed from film?

The short term solution of using film isn't very viable; this client is a real estate developer who adds "more lots available" and since we are talking multi-million dollar lots, it will be probably be more than 5 years before the project is complete.

[Cory]

When we originally setup our CTP system we had 2 dot gain curves.

1 that matched our film+plate setup and a new one for CTP.

the CTP setup we use 99.9 % of the time, but when we do get a job that is a critical color job and the client wants an exact match, we use the old film curve (which builds in more gain)

we have only had to use this on 2 jobs since we installed our system (almost 2 years)

[Mandys_Mac]

We did the same thing as what Cory said only we also made a curve specific to one client who had a similar situation to your real estate developer as far as their reruns and how color picky they were.

[cptucson]

That's what I suspected. I don't, however, know how to create a dot gain curve in Trueflow.

Thanks

[Mandys_Mac]

TrueFlow version 3?

[cptucson]

Yes, TrueFlow 3

[Mandys_Mac]

Go to your TF server - Start - TrueFlow 3 - Output Device Utility - Dot Gain Tool. It takes a little getting used to at first (like you have to check edit for each ink which seems stupid) but it is actualy quite simple. After you create them remember to apply them in your output tickets.

[cptucson]

I took another approach. I saw the file extension of other dotgain curves in the output ticket, did a "find file" for files with that extension, and then double clicked on one.

I created a new curve and saved it with a new name. The problem now is: It doesn't show up in the list of curves in the output ticket. I am thinking I need to make a change to the .xml file in the same folder as the curves. "DotgainList.xml"

Does this sound correct, or is there some user interface I should be going through in order to update that list?

[prepress_brillance_43]

I have seen TF occationally do this when I have created a new impo templete in Flatworker. Try closing TF and reopening and see if the list updates.... It sounds stupid I know and I haven't figured out yet why it is so slow to update, but it's worth a try....

[Mandys_Mac]

We had this problem too - but I can not remember what we did to fix it. Might have been the XML file. It will come to me at about 2 AM and I'll bolt awake mumbling about dot gains!