laser prints and color management

[sgwrx]

because this post is not directly related to printing actual photographs, posting here.  if it's decided to be more appropriate for the printing forums, please move.  i appreciate anyone's help.

at work we have a konica laser printer with an efi rip (which appears to be software only) and a spectrophotometer from xrite.  the printer rep setup the printer and installed the software, profiled a test print with the xrite device and turned us (me) loose to print to our (my) heart's content.

the first thing i printed was an sRGB TIF of a 24 color macbeth color chart to compare it to my personal color chart which is about 8 years old but stored properly. in a word, it was horrid.  the grey-scale was brown-scale. just about every color was shifted. i printed from photoshop and did 1 print with "let printer manage colors" and a 2nd print with let photoshop manage colors, but had no actual profile to print with.  then i printed it again from within the windows 7 photo viewer.

i've never printed with a rip before. i do have experience with color management and printing from a home-user point of view and printing on epson printers.  my guess is that the profile that the rep created is stored within the laser printer's domain and that when a non-color managed application is used to print (windows photo viewer or MS Word, or a PDF of unknow origin) the printer uses the created profile to print the colors.  is this a good guess? 

when printing from a color managed application like photoshop, i should be able to have that profile loaded on my local machine in order to use it to print - just like when i print with my (new!) epson 3880?  and further, when printing from Illustrator or InDesign, it should be like photoshop - you create a document with say, sRGB, then print it accordingly, with those programs managing the color instead of the rip or the printer?

speaking of the 3880, it's my personal unit which i've setup at work if for nothing else than to show them what good prints can look like.  i set it up for the first time tonight and printed the color chart from photoshop and i was a little on the "shocked" side of how close it actually printed compared to the actual macbeth color chart! i printed on epson premium luster.  it was the printer's 3rd print

normally, our goal at work is to print good quality proposals which contain colorized floor plans, graphs, spreadsheets and 3d computer renders (this is what i now do for a living, create 3d renders).  it's important for the 8 different colors we use as corporate branding colors, match what our graphic designer intended.

so, with the color laser, it's important for my renders and our company colors (logos and such) are as true as we can get without the need to perfect. but let me tell you, what i've printed so far is night-day difference for example compared to my 3880 prints.

i guess i need to understand:
a) how that laser printer uses the profile we created - is it only for non-color managed applications and only in-printer?
b) i believe that i have to have that profile loaded on my machine and a few other's machines who print presentation packets
c) and this is a big one, are laser printers even capable of printing somewhat accurate colors?  aka not brown-scale

i hope this isn't too far off topic for these forums. and again, thank you if your able to help.

-steve

[Stephen Ray]

I think most or all your concerns can be answered if you find your EFI / Fiery? user guide documents.  They should have been provided on CD or they can be found on-line if you Google for them, maybe at EFI. They might be called something similar to...

Fiery User Docs: 

Color Guide.pdf
Configuration Guide.pdf
Getting Started.pdf
Job Management.pdf
Printing Guide.pdf

... specifically to your machine make & model. (Although the docs are rather mostly generic because the laser printers at that level are so similar.)

On your RIP computer, you should be able to find the ICC profiles, the test target files, etc., and also the PDF docs as published on the CD & the internet.

I think you will have very good luck from that point.

Many of the laser printers in this class make very good solutions to produce Match Prints for typical printing presses nowadays including the ability to spec PMS colors. (Depending on your particular model.)

I hope this helps.

[sgwrx]

i'll search for user manuals this weekend.  unfortunately our IT person doesn't really want any part of printing beyond plugging it in.  good to hear that laser color can be satisfying!  right so i have a lot to do this weekend!