ipf8000 printing rgb vs cmyk

[cqmaps]

Hello everyone, I am back again with another question. Apologizes for not posting much, but I am still learning.

The ipf8000 I have is working just fine. But I do have a question about selecting ink types to print from.  I seem to remember that the guy I bought it from early last year indicated that I can have the printer print from either CMYK or RGB. From what I can see, it is using CMYK only along with some of the blacks. But no rgb. I have looked around and cannot seem to find the answer. Perhaps I am not asking the question correctly.

I guess what I am looking for is a clear indication of whether or not there is a setting in the printer that allows me to choose CMYK or RGB only. I am primarily printing from either windows print viewer or Esri ArcView (GIS software, I am a cartographer).

Any help would be very much appreciated.

[Nora_nor]

You need absolute colours?
--We use RGB mode because the printer driver assumes either sRGB or ARGB. Dunno about the canon printer plugin for prhotoshop and CMYK. Dunno about windows stuff, and often it has bad or no colour management (does not take ic profiles into account)

[Ernst Dinkla]

Hello everyone, I am back again with another question. Apologizes for not posting much, but I am still learning.

The ipf8000 I have is working just fine. But I do have a question about selecting ink types to print from.  I seem to remember that the guy I bought it from early last year indicated that I can have the printer print from either CMYK or RGB. From what I can see, it is using CMYK only along with some of the blacks. But no rgb. I have looked around and cannot seem to find the answer. Perhaps I am not asking the question correctly.

I guess what I am looking for is a clear indication of whether or not there is a setting in the printer that allows me to choose CMYK or RGB only. I am primarily printing from either windows print viewer or Esri ArcView (GIS software, I am a cartographer).

Any help would be very much appreciated.

There is no RGB ink set in your printer that could print in an RGB additive color mixing process, that does not exist in printing on white paper. A printer uses basically CMYK inks and can have some extra inks related to that CMYK system. Printing CMYK inks means subtractive ink mixing, each color ink layer filters/subtracts from white to create color. Plain OEM photo printer drivers usable from Photoshop etc translate digital RGB additive color mixing images (roughly Red+Green+Blue light combined gives white light) to CMYK data the printer hardware functions on. These are the basics.

To get correct color translations a system of color management can be used. For RGB images the corrections can happen in the RGB part of the translation and the corrected RGB data is then straight converted to CMYK data.
This is called the RGB-device color management method for printing, the printer is considered as being an RGB-device despite the fact that it is using CMYKetc inks. Photo editing applications like Photoshop + OEM printer drivers mentioned before work like that. It is wise in that case to create RGB defined images then as only one translation is needed to the printer and your monitor is a true RGB device so will cope better with RGB images like that.

It becomes different with other printer drivers that can handle both CMYK color defined and RGB color defined digital images. The color management corrections then normally happen on the translation between the image CMYK to printer CMYK definitions and RGB to printer CMYK definitions, the printer is seen as a true CMYK device by color management. These drivers are usually called RIPs. Applications that allow CMYK color defined designs, vector/bitmap/fonts, like Illustrator, CAD software and most likely your cartographic software need a printer driver (RIP) that can do the right translation. This is not always so obvious, enough designs are made with CMYK color description and then thrown through an RGB-device route to the printer. The colors can be way off then.

I do not know whether your application defines color in CMYK mode or RGB mode or gives a choice between the two, I suspect it is only the first. I do not know whether there are special printer drivers for that application or a separate RIP aboard that can handle CMYK or CMYK + RGB images en route to the iPF8000. Both the application and special printer drivers may not have ICC color mangement at all but more or less have hard wired conversion methods. With a RIP I would expect ICC color management.

If your iPF8000 printer driver is a plain Windows or OS-X one for photo printing and you can print from that cartographic application through it then check whether you can define color in that application as RGB. This should limit color deviations to print more, in the driver you can then also set driver color management, I do not expect that in the application itself.  If the carto software only knows CMYK then there might be some feature, a plug-in, for a more proper translation of CMYK to RGB for an RGB-device printer driver, it still does a CMYK>RGB>CMYK translation then. The best way then though should be a RIP to handle CMYK to printer CMYK conversions. In a few cases where printers are Postscript labeled there is a kind of mini RIP function in the OEM driver that can handle both RGB and CMYK input in formats like PDF and IPS. The same for some special CAD printer drivers that can handle CAD image formats, HPGL etc. but the number of supported printers may be limited.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[digitaldog]

UNLESS you are proofing CMYK (using this printer as a proofer), there's no reason to be messing with CMYK. Send it tagged RGB data.
Many drivers (GDI, Quickdraw) will barf on CMYK data. They will convert back to RGB (poorly) just to make the print. But again, unless your goal is to proof some other CMYK device, stick with RGB data, certainly with these drivers!

[Ernst Dinkla]

You need absolute colours?
 Dunno about windows stuff, and often it has bad or no colour management (does not take ic profiles into account)

For someone not familiar with Windows stuff you have a strong opinion on its color management in general. Numerous Windows applications in graphic design, photo editing, have color management based on ECI standards, the OS itself has a capable color engine. Reliable for color expert tasks, as that M$ color engine does not interfere where it should not interfere, printing targets for ICC profile creation for example, where OS-X put a spoke in the wheel years ago and forced Adobe to commit itself to the degree that even its Windows applications suffered on that aspect. This all with the idea to create a fool proof color management on Macs, assuming that there are just fools using Macs. Applications like QTR got in trouble too on the Macs by that decision. It took Adobe several months to write a separate application that avoids color management influences on printing targets for ICC profile creation for both Windows and OS-X and that small tool still has sizing issues. So third parties had to come with extra apps or find tweaks to get this reliable again. In short, it is more than a decade ago that OS-X had better color management than Windows did at that time, in OS and applications.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[Nora_nor]

Yes I remember that profiling target drama!

I still scratch my head about what Apple things how photographers print, they assume people use RIPs maybe.