Not necessarily changing the gamut, but perhaps better utilizing it? 100M, 100Y is not really a value that you'll encounter in live separations very often, and if you round trip that value through the GracolCoated profile with Abs rendering for example, you'll get 1.2C, 98.7M, 96.2Y, 5.1K, but through ICEsaver that value turned out to be 0.08C, 98M, 96.5Y, 1.6K...less contaminating color, which would yield more saturation.
If my customer is separating to Gracol and proofing in their office to Gracol and sends me a Gracol job to print, why in the world would I want to print with a gamut that exceeds Gracol by 20%??? If I'm not matching what the client is expecting, I'm not printing Gracol anymore, right?
To me this sounds like we're heading back to 'My printing is better than his printing!!! blah-blah-blah.' I don't think I want to go back there and I'm pretty sure print buyers don't either. Or am I misunderstanding something here?
Great points.
As a print provider, you may not want to offer "better" printing to your customers. That will be a choice that only you can make. I understand what you are saying about matching a proof and printing what your customers ask of you.
Another possible approach may be to ask your VP of Sales or top sales rep.
If you could show your clients how their work could:
- print easier
- print with a wider gamut
- print with better dynamic range
- use less waste
.......AND print with much less ink, then perhaps a case could be made for your compnay to:
- print greener with less waste (ink and paper)
- differentiate itself from your competitors
- offer your clients the choice and work WITH them to produce a "better" product
- pay for this software with ink savings and make ready savings it produces
- implement a proofing system that can proof the extended gamut
It's not just about extended gamut. "ICEd" files show greater detail, greater contrast all while preserving the tonality and grey balance of GRACoL. But, as always, your mileage may vary and if you ever want to explore these possibilities, then they are here and avaialble to you.
If my customer is separating to Gracol and proofing in their office to Gracol and sends me a Gracol job to print, why in the world would I want to print with a gamut that exceeds Gracol by 20%???
You wouldn't. Extended gamut printing, IMO, would be more geared towards a specialty service where you would control content/proofing early on, not where your customer is supplying a Gracol proof for you to run toward.
BTW, here's an image of the gamut comparison of Gracol (in green) to ICE'd printing.
[SNIP]BTW, here's an image of the gamut comparison of Gracol (in green) to ICE'd printing.
At higher SIDs than GRACoL. Have you tried printing your standard seps at higher SIDs (using a TVI compensation curve to normalize the gains) and compared that to the ICE'd separation presswork?
thx, gordon p
my print blog here: Quality In Print current topic: the creative design/production process
At higher SIDs than GRACoL. Have you tried printing your standard seps at higher SIDs (using a TVI compensation curve to normalize the gains) and compared that to the ICE'd separation presswork?
You mean have I printed "gordo-extreme"? no, I haven't tried that yet. Offhand I would say that the ink savings would be absent compared to the ICE separations or other ink saving solution. Going the route of heavy GCR and higher densities though, the ink savings could be fairly comparable.There will be a press test of this nature in the near future. Ill keep you posted as to the results as far as acheived gamut and printability.
Technically you could increase density, build new profiles, separate with these profiles and get a bigger gamut.
Any pressman who has gone down this path will tell you that this will not alleviate the known problems encountered in impact printing that are aggravated with high densities if you don't fix fundamental problems inherent in current separation technology. These issues include ink offset, drying problems, excessive back trapping, poor chemical trapping and ink emulsification.
Not to mention the question of how do you determine the optimal higher SID?
We have been involved in projects that have tried this and simply pushing density flat out failed.
Consideralso that many have tried similar approaches to increase gamut over the years that have even included people like flint ink with high pigment load inks and Pantone with innovations like Hexachrome. The problem always came in creating the separations. The only way to create a sep that could take advantage of the gamut gains was to custom edit every file. That's tough to commercialize.
This is why ICE excels where other fail. ICE intelligently sets SID not for gamut gain, but to optimize squeeze and pressure to improve inkflow and printability on a given stock.
The separation then distributes ink in such a way as to focus colored ink where the image needs color. Even using similar densities in areas that use similar builds, an ICE sep will demonstrate increased visual gamut as more colored ink will flow the color needy image areas without being stolen by the rest of the form.
ICE intelligently sets SID not for gamut gain, but to optimize squeeze and pressure to improve inkflow and printability on a given stock.
The separation then distributes ink in such a way as to focus colored ink where the image needs color. Even using similar densities in areas that use similar builds, an ICE sep will demonstrate increased visual gamut as more colored ink will flow the color needy image areas without being stolen by the rest of the form.
Ian,
These kinds of statements are difficult to evaluate and frankly don't make sense with out the description of how this is done. I can understand that for competitive reasons, you might not want to explain it yet.
Ian wrote: "Technically you could increase density, build new profiles, separate with these profiles and get a bigger gamut."
G: Yes. You could also use the same separations but run at higher SIDs to achieve the extra gamut.
Ian wrote: "Any pressman who has gone down this path will tell you that this will not alleviate the known problems encountered in impact printing that are aggravated with high densities if you don't fix fundamental problems inherent in current separation technology. These issues include ink offset, drying problems, excessive back trapping, poor chemical trapping and ink emulsification."
G: I'm not quite sure about your meaning here. In my experience, a press in nominal working condition using standard inks and conventional separations can reliable increase their SIDs by about 20-25 points without issues. I.e. K: 1.95/2.00, C: 1.6, M: 1.75, Y: 1.25
What SIDs are you advising/using?
Ian wrote: "Not to mention the question of how do you determine the optimal higher SID?"
Ian wrote: "We have been involved in projects that have tried this and simply pushing density flat out failed."
G: And I have been involved with many projects where using standard separation techniques, pushing SIDs and using a dot gain compensation curve has been very successful. As just one example, we did this at the Heidelberg demo facilities in Kennesaw GA in the early days of CtP to show some of the potential that CtP offered beyond simply eliminating film.
Your are correct about the complexities of separating for the Hexachrome process. Are you suggesting that ICE'd separations at higher SIDs equals (or exceeds) the Hexachrome gamut? I also agree that using high pigment load inks can also be problematic. If you can achieve a bigger gamut with standard inks and without adding press units - that would be the first choice.
Ian wrote: "ICE intelligently sets SID not for gamut gain, but to optimize squeeze and pressure to improve inkflow and printability on a given stock. The separation then distributes ink in such a way as to focus colored ink where the image needs color. Even using similar densities in areas that use similar builds, an ICE sep will demonstrate increased visual gamut as more colored ink will flow the color needy image areas without being stolen by the rest of the form."
G: I cannot understand what you you are trying to say. Maybe with more information...but I guess that would be divulging your "secret sauce."
I hope meddington does a proper evaluation. At the very least, what, I would like to see:
1) Test document with standard separations run to normal SIDs
2) Same document as 1 but run to higher SIDs (say 20-25 points higher) but using plate curves to normalize dot gain.
3) Same document run to same normal densities as 1 but with ICE'd separations
4) Same document as 3 using ICE'd separations but printed at higher SIDs (whatever Ian and Co. recommends)
of course, all 4 should be profiled so that their gamuts can be better compared.
Also, because the objective targets like process color tone patches, step wedges, and gradients don't go through a separation process they can provide baseline info on what the separation technique is adding to the process.
best, gordon p
my print blog here: Quality In Print current topic: Printshop Evils
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no, I haven't tried that yet. Offhand I would say that the ink savings would be absent compared to the ICE separations or other ink saving solution. Going the route of heavy GCR and higher densities though, the ink savings could be fairly comparable.There will be a press test of this nature in the near future. Ill keep you posted as to the results as far as acheived gamut and printability.
