How likely are you to recommend HP Large Format Knowledge Center to a colleague?
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Not at all likely
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Extremely likely
Hello Everybody,
I'm looking for a simple solution to printing a colour the same (or very close too) a physical objects colour, e.g. a vehicles paint, or to match against a sign writing vinyl.
To begin with I printed off a cmky chart with the idea I could use this to match desired colours, and on occasion this came in usefull. However, more than often the colour chart comes no-way near the desired colour. At this point I attempted to adjust the cmyk values and in some cases I got closer, and some times It appeared that I didnt have enough saturation to get an acceptable color match. So this led me to investigate the issue.
On the HP Latex forums I found a post with a simular problem, and a suggestion was made to do the following:
1. Upgrade unit to last Firmware version
2. Run Auto Printhead Alignment
3. Clone the media preset to save a copy of it
4. Reset Color Reference (it will erase previous reference in case there is one existing in the substrate media profile) Settings > Image-quality maintenance > Color calibration > Reset to factory
5. Run Color Calibration Settings > Image-quality maintenance > Color calibration > Calibrate
I'm not sure what this could prove but I thought I needed to start somewhere so that's what I did. The printers output had not changed after the proceedure. Here are some pictures of the Calibration Print...(I've no idea what the results mean?!)
After the above, I looked at saturation being the problem, I am Using Orajet 3164 Self-Adhesive Vinyl with the recommended profile. The Orajet profile would only allow a Ink Density upto 120% so no room for maneuver with this profile.
So I went onto use the Generic Backlit Profile allowing me to Print at 260% Ink Density. The profile did print successfuly but the temperatures were visably pushing the media to it's limit. The output appeared slighlty more saturated, only very very slight on the colours I had printed and as a result I'm not confident this is the solution.
I know that my machine can a hit a colour that I'm having issues with, I know this because I've had another person print me off the colour I was after on his 3rd Gen HP Latex, I'm just missing something... knowledge / technique / equipment... I don't know!!
Spectrophotometer has been mentioned but it's a rather expensive route to checkout!
Has anybody any solutions/techniques that I can use with the 310 to match colours?
Thanks for your time, Ben.