Scott Shepherd
04-05-2010, 10:08 AM
I had a job this weekend that was kicking me in the backside. I ran a number of items, all only having minor differences and I kept getting banding on one piece. The area that was banding was no different than any of the other pieces I had, but for the life of me, I couldn't get rid of the banding. I made 6 or 7 of them, all trying different things, all with no results. The color used in that area that was banding was 15% gray. I even tried rotating the image 90 degrees and then 180, and still same problem.
Then something hit me to check, and I slipped away from my deafult color palette that's loaded for the laser (sent by ULS with the laser), and I looked at colors on another palette. I noticed they said "15% black". So I wondered what the difference in 15% gray and 15% black were. In looking at the color in detail, 15% gray was a CMYK color (4 color setup), and 15% black was RGB (3 color). We use CMYK often as that's what printers are and if you're supplying CMYK to printers, it makes them happy :)
So, I got the values converted from CMYK, C=0,M=0,Y=0,K=15, to RGB, R=216,G=216,B=216. So I'm basically stopping the use of the CMYK palette and using the RGB palette and trying to match the colors. I ran a test, no banding, same look on the material.
So I start to wonder if I've been using the wrong color profile all along. I look at the palette that came with my laser and when you pick it, it seems to be CMYK colors. Yet, when I look in the manual, it mentions a tiny bit about colors and the only mention is RGB.
So it made think that maybe I've been using a color palette that the laser doesn't much care for. More testing will have to happen before I know the answer to that one, but for now, it solved my banding issue.
I learned a lot on that job. I used the smartfill tool a lot. I saw some very odd behaviors happen. I had an object that was trapped in and should have been the perfect use of the smartfill tool. I clicked it. Nothing happened. Clicked again. Nothing. Looked in the object manager, nothing created. Clicked all around the area. Finally, in one small space I clicked, it worked and the entire area was created. I checked wire frame to see if there was some tiny or hidden object around. Nope. Nothing. So I'm starting to think that there are some very small, fine details that are handled different in files, no matter how you create them or how they look on the screen.
Those are the things that jump up and bite us and we have to fight through. All this time, I thought it was me or something I did, now I'm beginning to think it's the way Corel handles things. It's not always 100% the same, which causes problems.
Just my theory at this point, but thought some people here would be able to contribute to this topic.
Then something hit me to check, and I slipped away from my deafult color palette that's loaded for the laser (sent by ULS with the laser), and I looked at colors on another palette. I noticed they said "15% black". So I wondered what the difference in 15% gray and 15% black were. In looking at the color in detail, 15% gray was a CMYK color (4 color setup), and 15% black was RGB (3 color). We use CMYK often as that's what printers are and if you're supplying CMYK to printers, it makes them happy :)
So, I got the values converted from CMYK, C=0,M=0,Y=0,K=15, to RGB, R=216,G=216,B=216. So I'm basically stopping the use of the CMYK palette and using the RGB palette and trying to match the colors. I ran a test, no banding, same look on the material.
So I start to wonder if I've been using the wrong color profile all along. I look at the palette that came with my laser and when you pick it, it seems to be CMYK colors. Yet, when I look in the manual, it mentions a tiny bit about colors and the only mention is RGB.
So it made think that maybe I've been using a color palette that the laser doesn't much care for. More testing will have to happen before I know the answer to that one, but for now, it solved my banding issue.
I learned a lot on that job. I used the smartfill tool a lot. I saw some very odd behaviors happen. I had an object that was trapped in and should have been the perfect use of the smartfill tool. I clicked it. Nothing happened. Clicked again. Nothing. Looked in the object manager, nothing created. Clicked all around the area. Finally, in one small space I clicked, it worked and the entire area was created. I checked wire frame to see if there was some tiny or hidden object around. Nope. Nothing. So I'm starting to think that there are some very small, fine details that are handled different in files, no matter how you create them or how they look on the screen.
Those are the things that jump up and bite us and we have to fight through. All this time, I thought it was me or something I did, now I'm beginning to think it's the way Corel handles things. It's not always 100% the same, which causes problems.
Just my theory at this point, but thought some people here would be able to contribute to this topic.