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The EFI Fiery RIP - part 4 of 1 2 3 4 5

by Mike McNamee Published 01/04/2013

We cross-checked the data using i1 Profiler Publish - they agreed!

Fiery RIP in Use

There is little to be gained in regurgitating the user manual for the software. Suffice to say that the operation consists of setting up a defined 'workflow' in which all the operating conditions are set out and saved for a future one-click operation.

For simplicity this can be driven from a wizard. Printing may be arranged to start automatically as soon as the job is spooled or you may specify a hold, in which case a second command to print must be clicked.

CMYK Workflows

This worked very well and we produced an in-specification proof without even linearising the system. The error was 2.00ΔE Lab on the Fogra V3 patch set. After printing and measuring it is possible to print a label which, in order to comply with the specifications, must be adhered to the actual proof print. Despite our efforts we could not get the label to rotate into the correct orientation for our Brother label printer although we did overcome the problem by printing first to a pdf and then using the pdf printer driver to rotate the label correctly; this is hardly ideal, it should be easier than this! We double-checked the verification on another measuring system (the i1 Publish Quality facility) and obtained a near identical result, so all seems well on that front.

For this workflow, the one which the system was originally intended for, it does exactly what it says on the tin!

A test target was made using an RGB/Epson workflow and a bespoke profile. This error data chart from i1 Publish shows why you have to migrate to something like the EFI RIP for colour verification of proofs. The errors (highlighted in red or yellow boxes) are predominantly in the dark tones so that although the average error is good, with a string of 'passes', the darks cause the dreaded 'FAIL' notice to appear on the label, something that will always leave the photographer open to challenge in the event of a colour dispute.

RGB and Lab Workflows

The RGB workflow allows the user to send RGB files to print with a variety of options. The output was not as good as that we obtain with our standard profiled output via Photoshop and the Epson driver. The Grainger Chart in particular was patchy although the average error was 3.82 ΔE Lab on the Fogra patch set using the 'colour clean' facility; the verification patch set was so far off it suggests that we were doing something incorrectly - the Help files are less than clear though! We also tried this workflow without using colour clean and with the IDEAlliance test target. This delivered an average error of 2.25 ΔE Lab on the target but failed on hue error, dH. Once again the Grainger Chart was very patchy.

The solution is to use a link profile for RGB workflows but this failed to install correctly so at the death we were once again thwarted by a RIP!

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1st Published 01/04/2013
last update 09/12/2022 14:53:43

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