The Importance of Profiles and Color Matching

The Shop

By Adam Sumner

I can remember back when I had my first printer delivered. I was running a Roland EX 540 Pro 2. It was a great machine coming with a tip but the machine was dropped off and set up and I was pretty much thrown to the wolves to figure out what everything was. With a list of generic profiles preloaded on the rip. For a number of years, that’s all I ran: one profile no matter what film was loaded, never realizing that my profile could have negative effects on my materials for installation. In this month's article, I wanted to touch on a few options you have, to really dial in your prints.

The first option is the most simple. Most manufacturers have ICC Color Profiles for you to download straight from their sites. This is a great option for those who don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of building your own custom ICC profile. By downloading the correct profile you will ensure that the amount of ink being laid down during each pass is set at the correct limit for what material you have loaded. Especially when printing with solvent printers you need to run the correct profile or the ink can migrate to the adhesive layer causing the film to be overly aggressive. 3M has released their new IJ 280 which has solvent block technology that helps block the solvent from affecting the adhesive but the easiest way to stop that from happening is choosing a correct profile. Looking back at all the issues that I had when I first started doing wraps I know half my problem was I was using a generic calendared print profile and when printing on cast films I was over-saturating the film and it was making the installs terrible. Even switching to a generic cast profile wouldn’t solve all my issues. Using the recommended profiles from the manufacturer for their materials and your ink set is the best way to get the full features of the film you are purchasing.

But I’ll be honest I didn’t want to stop there. Yes, the profiles I can download work just fine however they are not going to open the full potential of your color gamut, especially if your printer has spot colors as well. We started with the X-Rite i1 pro2 spectrophotometer and began messing with building our own profiles. We later added the iO table, so profiling materials for different pass counts could be done faster since it auto-scans rather than having to scan swatch color patches manually. We built tons of profiles for everything from adhesivebacked vinyl to scrim banners and custom fabrics we were using for Red-Carpet events. This method opened up our color gamuts and helped us limit our ink usage while still achieving extremely vibrant colors. We profiled multiple machines and were able to achieve similar colors across different media. This helped a ton when printing fabric and trying to match colors between buffet media.

Recently we have been messing with the new NIX sensor this is changing the game when it comes to color giving us the ability to sample colors at a customer’s location then match colors back at the shop and being able to check our prints without having to send a sample or take one by to the customer's location to verify our match. We can compare the original sampled color to our printed sample and see what Delta E Values we are able to achieve with our profile.

Delta E In simple terms is the perceived difference in color from sample to printed swatch. The closer to 0 the Delta E the more accurately perceived the color will be to a customer typically we are aiming for anything under a Delta E of 3.0. with both the Nix sensor and the X-rite we are able to compare the originals to our prints. We are also able to compare every printed piece to the original throughout the run to make sure that we are getting the correct color. For us when we sample colors we will try to match the color after lamination because our laminate can change the printed sample a bit. It's a good idea however that when you figure out what color is closest after lamination that you print and save an unlamented sample as well so you can do periodic print checks to make sure your color is staying true before you laminate and ruin an entire run.

Our goal is always to meet or exceed our customers’ expectations, especially with color. Going the extra mile to build your profiles from the ground up will drastically increase your chances of hitting a wider range of Pantone colors and ensure you're getting the most out of your printer. It will also ensure that prints that get sent out the door today will be able to match for years to come. Adding a spectrophotometer to your list of tools will cut down the time spent printing color swatches and guessing what color is close in different lights. Being able to sample colors and compare them takes all the guesswork out of color matching.

Adam Sumner

Adam@wrapixacademy.com Owner, Wrapix Academy, Wrapix Imaging, 3M Authorized Trainer