Advanced Ink Limits, In Onyx Productionhouse 7.1

General Color & Graphics Printer Calibration & Profiling
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Hello everybody,

This is my first post and I’m danish, please that into account, when you notice all kinds of errors.

I need advice with Onyx Productionhouse 7.1 Media manager.

When setting Ink Limits (advanced) I get the option to enter one value for C, M, Y, R, G, B and Grey… The first 3 is easy… on row of patches. But with the next ones, I’m in doubt… the last one is eaven worse… there’s 3 rows of patches!

I have a 6 MB shot of it, but only Flickr members can see it that large
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesperbolo/
Can I post a 6mb jpeg here?

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Hi Jesper

With Advanced ink restrictions you want to set the limit where the colour has turned into a solid black, but before you begin to see any artifacting eg bleeding, puddling, or simply not drying quickly enough etc.

For the figures which relate to 2 or 3 rows, you will often see 1 or 2 rows are free of artifacts right up to the end 4.0 (ie 400%) whilst another row in the same channel has problems lower down - say 2.6 (260%) You want to set the limit at the point where the artifacting stops - the lowest point on the 2 or 3 rows of patches.

For example, for number 7 you have 3 rows of patches. The upper row is free of bleeding right up to 4. The middle row has bleeding down to 2.6. The bottom row has bleeding down to 2.9. You need to set the ink limit just below 2.6 - say 2.55 or 2.50 - ignore the fact that the others are higher - you are looking for the lowest point across ALL the rows as a group that is free from problems.

Remember that usually you want the print to dry in a certain time period - maybe it will take 2 mins for the print to hit the basket on your printer, or a take-up reel. Thus even if there are no obvious problems you need to gently rub the test print at 2 mins after printing - you may find that at a higher %, usually above 3.00, it looks OK but is still wet which is no good - you need to select your limit lower where the patches are dry enough.

If your patches have no artifacts AND are dry right up to 4.00 you can set them here (ie no ink limiting) but this is a waste of ink - thus the point at which you choose your limit needs to be where you can no longer see colour and no more - save some money!

Sometimes you get bleeding in the colours which means you have to set the limit at in the low 2s or even 1.8 or 1.9

This is OK - you have no choice with such media. You will lose some of your gamut but not as much as you think. Those darker colours are still achievable for the most part by the icc. However you then MUST set the ink compensation number to 4 or 4.5 otherwise you will have a grey “capped” portion in your grads where the “missing” colour should be. Setting the compensation will pull the black upwards to meet the point where you capped your colour so that there is no grey gap in between.

You can get away with alot with this technique - often people will reject a media where they are forced to set the limits this low - you will be surprised at the result as long as you set the compensation to around 4.5.

Hope this helps!

Merry Christmas!

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I am facing the same problem… Thanks for the hint. I will try a compensation of 4.5 and report my results back in this post.

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So i tried using black ink compensation because i had low ink limits. It helped get a better profile, but still not enough. While looking more into this, I found some helpul information from someone in another forum. It helped greatly. Mainly it’s making sure the ink RESTRICTIONS are correct BEFORE getting to the ink limit step.

Here’s what I found:

"You need to be in “Advanced” Ink Restrictions to use Lch to decide on the ink restrictions - hit the Measure Tool and view the graph.

Unfortunately you can only use a spot-reader to read the patches in - something like an eye 1 device. Yours is a strip reader I think so you can’t use the tool properly until Onyx enable strip reading with the Measure Tool - it’s in the pipeline though. Seems you have to stay with density as you say.

I think you mean the Ink Limit Swatch? where there is more than 1 line per number you assess all the rows and choose the lowest number on either where you see no issues. eg 4a has drying problems at 3.2 4b has drying problems at 2.9. You set the lowest one (2.9 here) as your ink limit. Same for the 3 line grey swatch.

Black ink compensation, as I understand it, is used when you have a media which is barely compatible. Sometimes you have to set your ink limits very low. 12&3 are often around 2 - 2.2. this is normal. If your 4,5 &6 are giving you real problems you sometimes have to set these in the low 2’s as well. When you do this your gamut takes a big hit as you are limiting your colours in the shadows. You can achieve light & mid colours, and of course black, but there are fewer dark colours. If you leave BIC at 1 and build the profile you will not only see a reduced gamut (not much you can do here) but in a grad on an image you will see a mid-grey where your dark colours should have been. This “capping” shows up instead of the darker coloured shadows you were expecting.

Now the BIC comes into play. By increasing this up to 4 - 4.5 you will “pull” the black and mid colours together, “compensating” for the lost darker colours and hiding the capping.

If your 4,5 & 6 are in the high 2’s or 3’s the you can leave BIC at the default 1.

Don’t forget the icc will try it’s best to fill in some of the missing darker colours. If you limit them in the low 2’s and then print off an icc swatch you will still see some darker colours in the icc swatch even though it looks as if you threw them all away when you put a low ink limit on them. It is usually more forgiving then many people realise and you can do a fair job profiling papers that many would at first view as incompatible."

Ref: printplanet.com/forums/wide-form … nting-slow

I hope this helps, it did for me …