Color Profiles are critical to managing good color output on your printer. Printing accurate color is one of the primary challenges of the printing industry and rarely does it have a simple solution.
The first thing to understand about printing accurate color is that every type of media absorbs and displays colored ink printed on it differently than other media. As a result, a single color with the same CMYK ink output can look wildly different on different types of media. This is compounded by the fact that every printer and every ink type also has an effect on color output. This complicates the entire process of accurate color output. Color Profiles, also known as ICC Profiles, are thus created to compensate for these material differences and are specifically tailored to a combination of printer, ink, media, and desired quality output to achieve accurate color.
Color Profiles are generally created by the following organizations:
- Media Manufacturers
- Printer Manufacturers
- Dealers
- Individuals or sign/print companies with a Spectrophotometer
Given the countless combinations of printers and media available, we at SAi *do not* create color profiles.
We do have a library of color profiles that we have collected from manufacturers and individuals over the years, and you can locate them here, sorted by brand and model:
https://profiles.saicloud.com/
If we do not have them on this website, we do not have them and you will have to contact your dealer or invest in a Spectrophotometer and make one yourself. Flexi does have a color profiler tool to make Color Profiles, but it requires one of these devices. You can buy one online, or in some cases you can rent it from your dealer.
Adding and using Color Profiles in Flexi
Once you have color profiles for your printer, you can load them into Flexi in two places: RIP and Print in the Design workspace and Job Properties in Production Manager. The process is the same for either one.
- In the RIP & Print window, navigate to the Advanced Tab (Color Management Tab in Job Properties.) Select "Use Color Correction". The Output Profile dropdown becomes available.
- Once selected, in the Output Profile dropdown, select Add...
- Find the folder with your ICC Profiles. You can select multiple at once by clicking and dragging, or by clicking the top one and shift+clicking the last one. Then click Open.
- The Output Profile dropdown will now populate with the output profiles you just brought in. The names of these profiles often have the settings they contain in the name.
- Once you select a profile, the options below will automatically populate with the settings inside the profile.
- You are now ready to print with the color profiles. It is recommended you run a small test print first to ensure the color profile works as you desire.