Font issues

[Dtech]

We are having issues printing small, grey coloured fonts (PMS 432). IGen 4 (26", Matte toner, Freeflow rip) fonts keep changing to colour with Cyan being predominant colour so font ends up looking blue.
Is anyone else experiencing this?

 

[peels]

I experienced this, but only because I converted a postscript file to pdf. any mid tone gray turned cyan. Never figured it out...

No idea why, I was troubleshooting the printer because it was dropping out like 50% of the print on the page...

 

[Stiv]

A couple of issues going on here. First, the Black ink is on the 90 degree angle on the iGen. Test it out, print a 50% black in a thin font around 8 - 10 point. Your vertical lines in the T, I, N, etc will be gone in most of the characters. Lastly, grey can separate into C,M,Y with little to no K value. The Cyan angle prints the most of the type character so it looks more Cyan.

 

[Dtech]

Any solution? Going back to the client and telling them that they have to re-design documents is not an option.

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Hi Dtech,

Any chance you could send me a sample PDF to analyze? Is the file going directly to your RIP? Is it converting to 4c there?

Greg

 

[Dtech]

We actually found a solution. It seems to be a problem with the colour managment being done in Freeflow. We are now running graphics and text using direct CMYK and Images using Gracol and everything is very good.
The font colour in the original file was 45% black & 5% cyan. Freeflow colour management was changing it to 33% cyan 18% Magenta, 19% yellow & 14% black which was making the font look blue instead of grey.
Using the direct CMYK the font is printing exactly as it is in the file and it looks exactly as it should.

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Good to hear!

Greg

 

[Stiv]

Just watch out for when the vector color doesn't match the raster color.