"calibrated to my press"

[Gregg]

When someone states that their printer (e.g Epson 4800) is calibrated to their press, what does that actually mean? What is involved to create a profile that matches your press characteristics. I would appreciate as much detail as possible, or if you could steer me towards a site that discusses this that would be great too.

I understand black generation, dot gain etc. But when it comes to plate curves, linearizations, and the like, I get foggy.

Thanks.
gregg

[LoganBlade]

GRACoL: General Requirements for Applications in Commercial Offset Lithography


this is a great site and the standards are based on digital proofers and transfer this information into curves for teh press. It is an awsome color management system check them out

[Gregg]

Thanks, LoganBlade.

I'm a fellow Bostonian as well. Do you work in the city?

[LoganBlade]

I work in South Boston off Dorchester Ave you?

[Gregg]

Cambridge, right on Mass Ave.

I'm the Graphic Production Manager (a.k.a the Photoshop and Prepress guy) at a Children's Book publisher.

We do alot of our jacket printing in Southie, at JP Pow.

[MarkTonk]

Originally Posted by Gregg

When someone states that their printer (e.g Epson 4800) is calibrated to their press, what does that actually mean? What is involved to create a profile that matches your press characteristics. I would appreciate as much detail as possible, or if you could steer me towards a site that discusses this that would be great too.

I understand black generation, dot gain etc. But when it comes to plate curves, linearizations, and the like, I get foggy.

Thanks.
gregg

Hi Gregg,

LoganBlade provided a good link. Here is another link on a book on Color Management:
Heidelberg - Download Center

Here is what we typically we do at an instalation of CtP, Proofing and Color Management. First, you have to calibrate the CtP to provide plates that will give you the dot gain you require. For sheetfed, we typically target 18 to 20% on a good press sheet. We will output a properly exposed set of plates with a test pattern that has scales for reading dot gain. It also will have color images and a profiling target, like a IT8.3 or IT8.4. We ask the press operator to run to the standard densities. Once we are even, we read the gain and program the rip to hit our target gain. Once we have the proper gain, we will read the IT8.4 target with a spectrophotometer into our color management program, Print Open. Print Open is one of two programs that are in our Prinect Profile Toolbox (Heidelberg - Prinect Profile Toolbox - Overview ). Print Open will generate a target profile. We will then set up the Proofer, calibrated/linearisation it. Once the proofer is calibrated, we will output the same target we printed on the inkjet proofer. We will then read that with the spectrophotometer to generate a source profile. Both are then added to our proofing software, ColorProof Pro. The source profile is the inkjet and the target is the press. The inkjet is then altered so the output matches the source profile. You may need to tweak some, which is not a problem, we have interation capability with our Print Open software.

Regards,
Mark

[prepress_vee]

Nice long story - short.
Our PM74 - 4c goes in Monday am.
We'll be doing just that next week!
Vee

[The_Stevinator]

yeah, i had to break out the glasses for that one mark, and i have 20/20! i can personally vouch for the heidelberg meta calibration program. it's pretty good stuff. i really need to take the time this year to update and go with G7, we're still on the previous version.

[ICC_Color_Management]

For press curves, you can take a look at PerfX Press Curves™ whic allows to calculate the proper CTP curves to match either standard TVI or Gray balance.

For the proofer and press profile, PerfX Color Management™ creates the ICC profiles used for proofing. Iterations are made automatically at the ICC profile calculation step, using artificial intelligence (more than 10 0000 iterations) to create the color tables (Luts). So, tweaking is not needed.

Hope this could help!

regards,
Louis

[MarkTonk]

Originally Posted by prepress_vee

Nice long story - short.
Our PM74 - 4c goes in Monday am.
We'll be doing just that next week!
Vee

Hi Vee,

Nice long story short has more to do with my typing capabilities then composition.

By the way, enjoy your new press!!! And have fun setting up.

Regards,

Mark