Step 2 in Color Management: Printer and Media Color Gamut

In Step 1 of the color management to-do list we discussed how the quality of your monitor impacts the precision of your output. Step 2 of 3 focuses on understanding how your printer and the inkjet media choices affect color.

Print accuracy doesn’t rely solely on your use of a custom profile and an accurate monitor, though these two components guide you toward the closest possible result. There are two additional variables that can have a big impact on the types of colors you can hit with any printer…

The first is the gamut of the printer. How an ink is formulated in order to print a Coca-Cola red or a Pepsi blue, for example, may differ slightly from technology to technology.

These days I field a lot of questions about choosing between an 8-color system and a 12-color system.  Or, should I use the 9-color or the 11-color printer? Is there a noticeable difference between them?

The answer is yes, there is a noticeable difference any time you add colors. However, the next question I usually follow up with is, “What are you using the printer to print?”

When considering printing technology, there are printers made for higher-speed production (HP Z5200, Canon S Series, Epson T Series, to name a few) that can print a sellable photographic image, but would not be the ideal to use for an artist, photographer or fine art reproduction house. These printers have fewer inks, which cuts down on gamut but improves on speed in most cases.

If you’re in the market for a printer, talk to a LexJet customer specialist and explain the market you are in. We will make sure that you are using the right equipment for the job.

If you are seeing a color that is in your photograph or art piece that you just can’t nail with your printer, it may be out of gamut for the printer or out of gamut for the media you chose to print to.

If you’ve calibrated the monitor, make sure your printer is running at 100 percent capacity, that you’ve soft-proofed the image with the chosen rendering intent, and used a specific printer profile to print. If it still doesn’t portray what’s on your screen, then either of the above mentioned may be at fault.

Now I just spit out a bunch of jargon that may be foreign to you, so click on the links to the tutorials here to find out more…

Download and install ICC Profiles:

PC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W-F-k8z5io

MAC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuOhztAqoyY

How to Softproof before Printing using Photoshop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahf9yEPO4zA

How to print using ICC Profiles (find your printer and computer combination):

http://www.youtube.com/user/LexJet/search?query=Printing+Through

Color gamut difference between a gloss and matte photo paper.
Figure 1 shows the difference in gamut between a gloss and a matte paper in the high, mid and low range of color (top to bottom). The gloss paper is our Sunset Gloss Photo Paper (red line) and the matte our Premium Archival Matte Paper (green line) as profiled on the Canon IPF8400 with the X-Rite DTP70. Click on the image for a larger version.

You can’t do anything to increase the gamut of the printer, but you can make the right decision based on your needs at the time you purchase the equipment. Making sure you use the right equipment for the type of work you are doing will dramatically increase the quality of your print.

Our second extremely important variable to understand is the media with which you choose to print. The less reflective the media, the less light that reflects back into your eyes, and therefore, the lower the gamut and detail your print will realize (see Figure 1).

Artists have come to love matte watercolor papers and canvas, yet always demand the best color on those surfaces. This is where the owner or production manager at a fine art reproduction house runs into the biggest conflict.

The reflectivity of your media is not the only aspect of the printable supplies that affects color outcome.  White point can change your gamut as well. The brighter the white point, the more gamut you’ll pick up, not to mention an increase in that lovely term the experts like to use, Dmax, which is the darkest measurable value your printer-media combination can hit.

For canvas, Sunset Select Gloss Canvas has the highest dynamic range and color gamut of the canvas offerings LexJet produces. The highest-gamut matte canvas is our Sunset Select Matte Canvas, which has a very punchy white base. Partnering the Sunset Coating line with Sunset Select Matte Canvas has been a very popular choice amongst artists and photographers.

If you are trying to appease the artist crowd who prefer fine art papers, the highest-range matte paper is Sunset Fibre Matte (a very smooth bright-white fiber cellulose paper). If you need 100% cotton with a smooth finish, Sunset Hot Press Rag will be close behind.

If they would like texture on their cotton paper our latest addition to the line is Sunset Bright Velvet Rag.  This paper has the highest Dmax of our cotton line and prints very elegant-looking velvet-textured prints.

On the photographic side of media options, all of our bright white glossy and semi-glossy fibre-based papers put out a phenomenal range. They are all meant to emulate different versions of old-style air dried chemical bath papers that film photographers were used to exposing in the darkroom. These papers include Sunset Fibre Gloss, Sunset Fibre Elite and Sunset Fibre Satin.

Our newest paper in this category is Sunset Fibre Rag, which is 100% cotton and has a warm tone to the base. Even though it is warm in tone, the range is very large and the texture is very fitting to that style of paper.

For RC photo-based paper replicas, nothing tops the gamut of the Sunset Photo Gloss Paper. It reflects the most light, has a high-gloss wet-looking surface like one you would receive from a photo lab providing chemical-style glossy prints.

Also ever so popular for printers looking for a beautiful thick luster paper (e-surface) is our Sunset Photo eSatin Paper. This paper has a very cool white point and the surface is the most popular amongst the RC-emulating class of papers.

LexJet will provide you with the ICC profiles for every media above mentioned. If we do not list one here for your technology we will happily make one for you free of charge! Next time, we’ll tackle Step 3 in the color management to-do list: understanding ICC Profiles and settings. In the meantime, feel free to call us any time at 800-453-9538 with questions.

More than a Sample: LexJet Sales & Applications Guides in the Real World

 

The initial results are in from LexJet customers who picked up the new LexJet Large Format Graphics Sales & Application Guides – one geared toward aqueous printers and the other toward solvent, low-solvent, UV-curable and latex printers (SUV) – and the Guides are performing as designed and beyond expectations.

Sales and application guides for large format inkjet printing“I’m really drooling over this Application Guide. As my rep, Jason Dragash, was describing it over the phone, it pales in comparison to actually seeing it in front of you,” says Les Blevins, owner of Palette Arts, a fine art and photographic reproduction company in Nipomo, Calif. “Just seeing what my options are for media opens up new doors for me, so I’m really excited about it, especially since I got a new Canon iPF8300 from LexJet. It blows my old printers away with the color spectrum. With the six-color printers I was using I would get up against the fence and pretty much stay there because their color gamut was limited. But when you add a true color wheel of red, green and blue, a couple of grays and another black to the mix, I’ve climbed over the fence with the Canon and I’m in pastures I’ve never been in before.”

Blevins says the Application Guide is more than a simple sample book, but a true sales and production tool. It’s simple, in-depth and provides a professional presentation so his clients are given real freedom of choice, he says. Moreover, the key component, at least for Blevins since the majority of his work is art and photo reproduction, is consistency.

“I’ve seen a lot of other sample books and they use different images for each paper. On the other hand, LexJet’s Application Guide uses one image and shows it across all the media offered, which shows me where the color may change and what it will look like across the different media, so that was a really smart move,” explains Blevins. “I can actually hold the Sunset Fibre Satin, for example, look at that image and go forward to the Sunset Velvet Rag and see the real differences between the two. I can see that the Sunset Velvet Rag is actually brighter and more contrasted than the Satin. It allows me to do a direct comparison because I now know as a printer that I’ll see the same differences using the same image on different media. Ultimately, it lets me and my clients gauge what kind of effect we want and choose the paper based on that, which is why I really like the guide.”

The Sales & Applications Guides are $89 and include sheets of banner materials, display films, vinyl media, fine art and photo papers, wall coverings, complete trade show and point of purchase solutions, and various laminates.

Each product includes a brief description, as well as features, applications and technical details. One half of the media is printed and the other is blank so customers can see how colors reproduce on each material and the texture, surface properties and base color of the material before it’s printed.

Supplies are limited, so to purchase a LexJet Sales & Application Guide (Aqueous and SUV), contact a LexJet account specialist at 800-453-9538 or you can order them on the Web at the links above. Like all LexJet products, the Large Format Graphics Sales & Application Guides come with a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee, $9.99 flat rate shipping anywhere in the U.S. and Canada and fast delivery from one of LexJet’s 15 nationwide distribution centers.