Hey everyone,
I'm in dire need of some guidance if someone can point me in the right direction. Let me walk you through my predicament.
I work for a commercial printer and am trying to help out the prepress dept. figure out an issue. We use a RIP called Xitron Sierra to send PDF files to our workflow (Proofs, plate separations, etc). Previously we had an Epson 7800 proofer that we were able to sort of manage it's color output inside Xitron's Color Management software. That printer died, and the boss picked up a 7900 to replace it.
Well, it turns out Xitron (supposedly due to new feature-limiting drivers from Epson) no longer has the ability to manage colors for this printer internally and are forcing folks to use 3rd party software to manage/create color profiles that can then be imported into Sierra.
Having tried a couple of the "canned" Epson profiles, we've yet to output a proof that closely matches what we were outputting on the 7800 with our custom settings.
Let me back up a little, and note that we have some older press equipment, so we do not need profiling to match from proof to press, as we still have a lot of manual controls on the press-room floor - we need to output pleasing and accurate proofs that provide achievable color on press.
That being said, the $2,400 for i1 Publish Pro 2 or similar was something we were looking to shy away from in order find a solution for creating this profile. We were under the impression that something like ColorMunki Photo might be a tool we could utilize to create a custom ICC profile and then import into the color management portion of the RIP. Essentially all we need to come up with is a CMYK color profile that can closely match what was achieved on the old 7800.
ColorMunki has been a bit of a letdown though, while it works and seems to be creating a profile - it is only outputting RGB color swatches and ICM profiles. After a chat with the X-Rite folks, they said CM is pulling the RGB spec from the Epson print driver. CM supports both RGB/CMYK profile calibration, but it is not manually selectable - it just grabs information from the 7900. A few google searches found others had the opposite issue.
My question is - is there a such thing as a CMYK print driver? Is there a way for CM to interpret the 7900 as a CMYK printer - if so, how do we change it?
Without the ability to create a CMYK profile, we're a bit dead in the water. We can create a RGB profile all day, but Sierra's software will only allow us to import CMYK profiles.
Is there an easy solution to this that I'm missing? Any help would be immensely appreciated.
Thanks!
