Color calibration / custom media

[oxident]

Hi!

I'm wondering how you are dealing with custom / Non-HP media. As we all know, the Pagewides only support continuous tone RGB input and therefore, the entire linearisation / ink-limiting and profile chain is handled internally. Quite sure, HP has done intense testing and profiling efforts for their own (known) paper types.

So basically, I see two options for printing on generic media types:
- Use SmartStream to submit the job "as is it" (without any color correction) and hope that one of the internal paper types matches your media good enough
- Use a 3rd party RIP software like Fiery XF or ColorGate to create a secondary profile.

My problem is that neither of these options produce satisfactionary results for me. The first one fails because the built-it media types are too different than the ones I'm trying to use (= orange turns to red, color casts in grey areas, ...). The second option means doing color correction twice (in external and internal RIP), which is generally a bad idea resulting in a greatly smaller gammut if you compare the two ICC profiles.

So my goal would be to create an ICC profil using my own profiling soft-/hardware and have it somehow uploaded to the Pagewide. As those printers don't support creating custom media types, I would try to replace one of the internal media types.

Has anyone ever tried something similar?

[cjohnson406]

Hello,

Maybe something on the media locator could help you out.

https://www.printos.com/ml/#/medialocator

[oxident]

Well, it is a good place to start, of course. But the main problem remains: HP won't (and can't) provide presets for every kind of paper type. In my case, I'm using a heavyweight paper with a special "barrier coating" to avoid curling on heavy ink coverage. Works great if profiled (tested on a Z6800) ... but not when using generic profiles like "HP Heavyweight Coated".

I don't think HP offers a solution to create OMS profile packages, do they?

[cmwade77]

Honestly, we just buy the HP paper, yes it is slightly more expensive per roll (about a $0.50 difference on 30" x 500' rolls), but it then consumes about 40% less ink and we don't have to do as many replots, nor do we have as many paper jams. So that small difference per roll is more than saved in the other issues.

[oxident]

Sounds good but at my location, the price difference is quite huge (about 5-10$ per roll for plain paper).

Regarding the main problem: Could it be that the ICC files inside the printer are just used in order to get downloaded by clients (e g. Smartstream) and aren't really used by the internal color correction?

[tech2tech]

The pagewide is a business color line drawing printer. It sounds like you need a graphic printer if you are needing to profile color and media.

[oxident]

Yes. I was just hoping to get a fast alternative to our Z6800 for "not so critical" jobs

[tech2tech]

Use coated media and print in high detail. This will give you your brightest colors. There is a Rumor that HP is working on a Graphics model of the Pagewide. Time will tell if this is true.