Thank you for your interest in our World of Fiery Webinar. This FAQ answers the questions from the session. If you would like to view the session again or share it, please access the recording of the webinar here. What software is required for G7? What level of Fiery is required? Is additional G7 training beneficial or necessary? How or does G7 improve spot color matching? Fiery Color Profiler Suite version 4.9.x is required for G7 and any Fiery system back to System 10. Training is always beneficial; you ll better understand what you are actually doing when you G7 calibrate the Fiery server and create a custom output profile for a specific paper type. A custom calibration set and profile with (or even without G7 calibration) will give much better spot matching than using the factory profiles that were created for a different kind of paper than what you are printing on, in a different physical environment (think temperature and humidity), and on a different physical press than the one you have in your shop. What can we actually do with G7 calibration? For now, it's calibrated by an expert, and we just print. With G7 calibration and a custom output profile, you can get great quality prints and reprints that you can match. You can also get into the habit of verifying your color precision with a spectrophotometer and software such as Fiery Color Profiler Suite Verify so that you know how good your color is every day before you have a print run rejected. You can also turn this into a powerful marketing tool. If your customers see that you verify the precision of your printing then they ll be more inclined to buy print from you rather than from a shop that is not quantitatively monitoring quality. Is G7 an add-on to Fiery Command WorkStation? No, Fiery Color Profiler Suite is an add-on software option for your Fiery server. It has its own Launchpad but you can access a few of its functions from Command WorkStation assuming you have the version of Fiery Color Profiler Suite that was shipping when your Command WorkStation software was released. It s ok if you don t have this alignment; you just launch the standalone Fiery Color Profiler Suite tool and use its Launchpad to access all the color management tools including the G7 calibration. Is this already built in to the Fiery software I am currently using or is it an add-on with extra cost? Fiery Color Profiler Suite has an add-on cost of $3400, which includes an ES-2000 spectrophotometer. You can purchase it at estore.efi.com. How can this process achieve better, more stable color quality? Surely, this is largely dependent on the mechanical and technical capability of the print engine. Most print engines that are under service contract with the manufacturer are in good shape and can achieve G7 Targeted or even G7 ColorSpace. To get it to work you need a custom calibration (with G7 in this discussion) and an output profile for the paper you are using in your actual physical press in your operating environment. You also need to re-calibrate (just regular Fiery calibration, not the whole G7 + Profiling) on a regular basis. Otherwise, the technical capability of the press gives prints that are not neutral, do not match industry references like GRACoL or SWOP, and change from day to day in the quality of their output. G7 calibration applies for which controller and which printer system? All Fiery servers back to System 10 if you get Fiery Color Profiler Suite. 1
How can I improve match of Pantone colors? Make custom ICC profiles for the job stock you use, on your press, in its normal operating environment in your shop. If you use Fiery Color Profiler Suite for profiling and you have some critical Pantone colors to match for your customers, you can optimize the spot colors using the Device Link module of Fiery Color Profiler Suite. How do I calibrate for printing to a clear media and printing color with white flood or color/white/color? The only thing you can do here is to make the print product then calibrate it. It depends if you apply the white in one pass with the CMYK, or if the white requires its own pass through the press. I ll assume the latter and if this is not the case then post the question over on the Fiery Forums and we ll help you more. If you pre-print the white, just make a few pre-printed sheets then feed these when calibrating. It is unlikely just recalibrating to a factory default calibration set will help you very much, but you can try that if you like. The best practice would be to get some pre-printed sheets then make a custom calibration and profile for the way the colors overprint the white colorant. Can G7 be implemented with Fiery embedded RIP on a Canon C60? If so, what extras would be necessary to implement? Yes, you need Fiery Color Profiler Suite version 4.9.x to implement G7. How long does the process take for digital presses to become G7 certified to match the G7 certification of a large industrial press? The process takes about 30 minutes. Sometimes you have to iterate a few times to fine tune the G7 Fiery calibration, so in that case it might take 40-45 minutes. Is it possible or practical for a person with moderate red-green colour blindness to perform colour calibration? Absolutely. That s the best part of doing color by the numbers. You can calibrate, create a custom profile, then verify the precision of your print against a reference like Fogra 39L or Fogra 51. You don t need to see the color at all to do this. Color management and E ( delta E ) color comparisons are based on a numerical system that mimics human perception so the numbers will tell you how someone with full color vision would view the output. How can I register colors true as much as possible without Fiery Color Profile Suite? Assuming you have a Fiery server, you can still calibrate the Fiery server and use the factory profiles. You might check with your press manufacturer to see if they can get the details from their headquarters about what paper types (the actual brand, finish, and GSM) they instructed EFI to use when creating the factory profiles for your press model. Then use those exact paper types, calibrate regularly, and you should get good, visually pleasing results. If you don t have a spectrophotometer to calibrate you can use ColorCal off the glass. But having an ES-2000 will give you much better calibration results and you can even do some manual color verification using a spreadsheet and measuring via the Fiery Measure application that comes free with Fiery Color Profiler Suite (no license required to use Fiery Measure if you install the Fiery Color Profiler Suite demo). 2
How can I become G7 Certified? If you personally want to become a G7 Certified Expert or Professional, you take the class and the test from Idealliance: < http://services.idealliance.org/prod/icommerce/training/g7training.aspx> If you want your shop to be G7 Qualified, the procedure is here: https://www.idealliance.org/certification/facility-certification/g7- master-qualification-fees/. If you want to do this, you need a G7 Certified Expert to submit your application. What is the cost of implementing, required training, software, equipment & certification, and length of training time? Fiery Color Profiler Suite costs $3400 with an ES-2000 spectrophotometer or $2300 for the software only if you already have a spectrophotometer. If you have an ES-2000, be sure to check with your Fiery dealer since Fiery Color Profiler Suite is sometimes bundled with Fiery servers, so you might already be licensed. The only training you need is in the How-To document, though of course it would benefit you to take a G7 class from Idealliance. If you want to get certified yourself, it is one cost to become G7 certified, and a different cost to get your shop qualified plus you need to hire a G7 Expert to do the submission. Info is here <http://services.idealliance.org/prod/icommerce/training/g7training.aspx>. Should G7 calibration start with, and include, designers? I guess my concern is if I can't control the quality from upstream, what good will G7 calibration do? In the US and even abroad, 99% of the time designers are already designing for G7 since they convert all their color to the SWOP or maybe GRACoL profile in Photoshop or other design applications. There is nothing you need to do to get them to design to G7. But in order to do the best job printing their jobs, you need to at least set the CMYK Source profile on the digital front end (DFE) to GRACoL or SWOP. Ideally, you also want to make a custom output profile for you press and paper. If you G7 calibrate before making an output profile, it may work better and will last longer before needing to re-profile the paper, which eventually always needs to be done as the press wears in. Is there a way to make color variances not so dramatic from screen to print? We work from.ase and Pantone swatches as much as we can, but we've found that when using Adobe Kuler or making colors, the variance is almost unbelievable how different it is. Make sure you are working on CMYK in Adobe Illustrator to better simulate the printer s gamut. You can reduce the difference by profiling your monitor with Fiery Color Profiler Suite or dedicated 3 rd party display-profiling software. But that s the easy part. When we profile a display, we need to profile it to a specific white point and brightness. For print, the white point should be D50 and the brightness will be whatever it is set to on the monitor controls. So now for the print to match the screen, it needs to be in a D50 light booth that is the same brightness as the screen and with little ambient light in the room to interfere. A less expensive alternative is to buy a tabletop light booth with variable brightness and put the whole setup in a windowless room. The cost would be around $2500 for such a light booth with digital dimmer and high CRI (Color Rendering Index). For critical screen to print matching, the investment is higher for something like an Eizo or other softproofing-specific display. These can be paired with light booths that automatically adjust brightness via a USB wire to match the display. At this point, don t even worry about monitor profiling software since it will come bundled with the high-end display. We have Color Profiler Suite 4.6.2.19 with no maintenance contract. What is the upgrade path or process to 4.9? You need to renew your Fiery Color Profiler Suite Software Maintenance Support Agreement (SMSA) for the years that the contract has lapsed. We will email you to get your serial number so you know how many years renewal to order. 3
G7 on uncoated paper? G7 on non-compliant paper? G7 works for any printing process with any tonal range. If you do it on uncoated paper, you might want to pick a lower-gamut source profile for that workflow, something like SWOP5 or since you won t have the gamut to match a source like GRACoL. If you are verifying your precision in a tool like Fiery Color Profiler Suite Verify, you won t get passing scores against GRACoL since you don t have enough gamut on uncoated paper. But the SWOP profiles are also based on G7, so G7 calibration will still help your output profile give the best results. We are able to use a spectrophotometer to measure paint chip colors really well and they print well from Fiery. But as soon as we input those color values in Adobe Illustrator they don't look the same. Is there a print setting in Adobe that I am missing? I suspect you are entering the device values in Adobe Illustrator, the CMYK values you see when measuring each chip. The CMYK is the recipe for how to match that color on the current paper. It won t show the right appearance in a design application that is set to a different CMYK working space like SWOP or maybe even is creating RGB rather than a CMYK design. You can solve this by entering the L*a*b* values shown at the right when measuring the colors in Spot-On. These will give the right on-screen appearance. Remember, to get them to print right you ll need to make them spot colors(not process) in Illustrator and name them exactly the same way you named them when measuring on the Fiery server so that they will be found when you print the design. Please differentiate this G7 feature with Curve 4 corresponding features. Fiery Color Profiler Suite is used to G7 calibrate Fiery servers and is easy enough for anyone to do it. Curve 4 is used to G7 any press or printing process in the world but you need to take curves out of the software and load them on the front end for a press whether digital or analog. There are actually several ways you can get Fiery-specific curves saved that we used before we added G7 support to Fiery Color Profiler Suite, but these older methods were a bit more complicated and Fiery software at that time never showed if you passed G7 unless you went back to Curve software. How does one leverage the P2P if internal devices to engines can do grey balance? Use the 2-up target to print and measure all the P2P patches twice and average the two. During CPS media profile creation, which Black Channel edits are the most common and effective when Color Verifying to ISO 12647-7? In Profile Settings, load the factory profile for the paper most like the one you are profiling to get the expert values EFI used to make the profile for that paper that the press manufacturer-approved. You can enable Max GCR if you want even better neutrals and sometimes more saturated colors. If Max GCR results in too grainy of an appearance, re-make the profile by loading it into Printer Profiler under Convert Measurements to Profile but loading your profile instead of measurements. Now in Profile settings, change the black start to 20 or 30 to get the grain out of the highlights. This is not always required. It depends on the press and its halftones as well as customer preference. How will this affect daily usage of the light production Xerox and Kyocera products? It will help colors to print more accurately and more consistently. 4
Will this solution work with Konica Minolta Color Care Software? No, Fiery Color Profiler Suite is an alternative to Color Care software. Color Care does have a way to do G7 but I think it does it with the output profile that it makes for the Fiery server, not with the Fiery calibration. If you own the full Color Care (not just Catch ) then it s worth a try but I think it will not be as efficient or simple as doing it with Fiery Color Profiler Suite. You might consider looking at Curve Software to verify if Color Care really got you to G7. I m not sure it has the function to show you if you are passing before you make a profile. What are the best practices for dealing with UV OBA, FBA, and FWA's? UV OBA = Optical brighteners. The best practice is to profile and verify profiles using the M1 mode on the spectrophotometer and view the prints in a modern light booth that complies with ISO 3664:2009. Look this up online to find out how to inspect the bulbs in your light booth to make sure they are compliant. I might need help with the other buzzwords. Please post the FBA and FWA question to the Fiery Forums and tell me what they stand for and we will try to help. How to handle customer approval of color change from a current color process to a G7 process, which will result in different color, but be repeatable for the future? Try it and see how much it changes before you get too concerned. It is very likely that the prints will look better and you can ask your customers opinion. There s a big value in consistency. If they look worse, don t hesitate to post on the Fiery Forums and we ll see what we can figure out. You could also make a server preset for the old way you ran the jobs and use this for reprints and pickups. Is there a recommended method to linearize CMYK curves (plot points on Curve) to aid with G7 calibration? If calibration\profile does not get your there? You don t want to linearize for G7. You could use Curve to check the results, but if you re not matching, the best practice is to re-do the G7 calibration in Fiery Color Profiler Suite and iterate calibration if needed until you pass. You could also plot the results in a spreadsheet based on raw measurements collected with Fiery Measure but this is a pretty complicated undertaking unless you are pretty skilled both in color science and in Excel. Will my EFI color profiles created on Fiery Command WorkStation 5 be compatible with G7? No, the factory profiles are created using simple Fiery linearization. If you do then you need to also make a profile in the software that works with the G7 calibration. Even if you don t G7 calibrate, you should typically make a custom calibration then a custom profile that works with that custom calibration. Is there any option to edit the device link profile? Device links are designed to improve the precision of a match to a reference. They only get edited when we iterate to refine them. An edit would probably reduce the precision of the match. If you have a customer that just wants to eyeball the color then make an output profile only (not a DLP) and you can edit that. 5
Can you touch on Linking calibration to multiple stock profiles (Common calibration on reference sheet-linked to different stock profiles) as compared to individual calibration for each profile on the same stock as profiled? If you are going to do G7 you are going to have to do it per-sheet. You could try G7 calibrating all the papers you want to use then trying all the combinations (every calibration + profile you made on all the papers). If you try it using a control target like the Idealliance or Fogra media wedge then you can check the tolerances of each to a reference like GRACoL or SWOP, and you might find some cases where you can share. Alternately, you can create a G7 calibration for your nicest sheet then make profiles for all the other papers using the same calibration, but this won t work as well and you definitely will not get all the sheets to G7. If I take this course will I be able to certify a customer for G7? No, the only way you can **qualify** a customer as a G7 Master printer is for you to be a Certified G7 Expert (or Professional for recertifications only). Idealliance certifies Experts and Professionals based on a test taken after completing a G7 Expert training. Idealliance also runs the Qualification program for shops so that s where a G7 Expert submits the test forms and other materials to get a shop G7 Qualified. Just need a refresher on color tools and color verifier. Kind of hard to refresh in this format but why don t you post a few specific questions on the Fiery Forums so that we can answer them there. Can we make a profile for special Pantone colors in Fiery? When you make a custom output profile you are making a custom profile for the Pantone colors to match on the paper and press for which you have made a calibration and profile. There is no need to make a Pantone profile since Pantone colors are already defined on the Fiery DFE in the licensed libraries from Pantone using device independent (L*a*b*) color appearance values. What is the best environment lighting (except natural daylight) for getting the best calibration results? You want to view the results in an ISO 3664:2009 compliance light booth. There is no lighting when you are calibrating that could affect your results. If I misunderstand your question, please post it on the Fiery Forums and I will try again. How do we keep accurate calibration everyday? By calibrating with a spectrophotometer. Best practice is to calibrate every day or every shift. You need to calibrate on the specific paper you used to make a custom calibration set or if you are using factory profiles then choose a sheet that you always use to calibrate each. If you want some guidance about which papers to use with factory profiles please post a question on the Fiery Forums. Please ballpark the investment in tools/training required to implement G7? Understanding the broad range of scenarios and options; still, a $$$ and time estimate range for small-medium installations would be VERY helpful. Fiery Color Profiler Suite has an add-on cost of $3400, which includes an ES-2000 spectrophotometer. G7 calibrating and profiling each sheet will take you 30-45 minutes. Our G7 calibration How-To guide shows you how to do this with no additional training. 6
Does the Spyder 5 Elite Color Calibration Tool fit into this workflow at all? Trying to get consistent color from the design displays which is a necessary part of this color consistency workflow. You can use the Spyder to calibrate your display but expect it will be closer, not a perfect match. When we profile a display, we need to profile it to a specific white point and brightness. For print, the white point should be D50 and the brightness will be whatever it is set to on the monitor controls. So now for the print to match the screen, it needs to be in a D50 light booth that is the same brightness as the screen and with little ambient light in the room to interfere. If you have properly profiled a monitor, a good general metric is that it will look yellow and low contrast. Print has much less dynamic range than a display so when it is profiled the display will look bad compared to before it was profiled. I'm interested to confirm that updating my Command WorkStation will never affect my printers. Correct, Fiery Command WorkStation is not the DFE (server), it s the client. Notice how you can connect many copies and versions of Command WorkStation to a single Fiery server from different workstations in the shop. None of them will have different output with the exception that newer versions of Command WorkStation expose new features on newer Fiery servers. So if you are using a new control that is not available on an older version of Command WorkStation, the prints may be different compared to printing with the latest version using the new control. The safe bet here is to always run the latest version of Command WorkStation on all the workstations and on the Fiery server itself if it is an external server with keyboard, mouse, and monitor. The latest Command WorkStation is available at efi.com/cws or from the Fiery Software Manger on your workstation. When will be the G7 calibration feature available in Fiery XF? G7 calibration is possible on Fiery XF using the Curve software by saving the curves as an XF Visual Correction Curve (.vcc). Make sure you attend the World of Fiery on September 13 for more details. Could you summarize the benefits of G7 calibration for digital products when.icc normally control the grey balance? I hear this question all the time, why they should care about G7 calibration when they have been passing G7 on Fiery servers since 2006 by using a custom ICC output profile for the exact paper and press combined with selecting an input profile that is G7 calibrated (legacy SWOP ICC profiles made from CGAATS TR 001 dataset, SWOP and GRACoL 2006 and 2013 ICC profiles). The answer is that with gray balanced calibration the profile doesn t have to work as hard to keep prints neutral. If you think about a profile as a lookup table with a finite amount of entries or nodes in that table (which it is or you d have a 100 megabyte profile), the nodes around the neutral axis of the color space are limited. On a well-behaved engine they might get the grays perfect throughout the tonal scale. But if the press has crossovers or reversals in its gray balance, as can often be the case, there aren t always enough lookup table entries to perfectly correct this. So by starting out gray balanced, we can be more certain the profile will deliver neutrality. Also, since we are starting from this optimized neutral condition it is very likely that the output profile will continue to deliver neutrality and targeted tonal values for a longer time compared to an output profile made with a non-neutral calibration before re-profiling is required. 7
What kind of spectrophotometer and software do we need? Any common spectrophotometer will work and you need the Fiery Color Profiler Suite software version 4.9.x to perform G7 calibration on your Fiery server in the manner demonstrated in the session. The spectrophotometers that can be used with Fiery Color Profiler Suite include EFI ES-1000, EFI ES-2000, EFI ES-6000, X-Rite i1pro, X-Rite i1 Pro2 ( series E ), X-Rite io table with matching EFI ES-x000 or X-Rite i1 device, X-Rite isis or isis XL, Barbieri Spectro Pad, Barbieri Spectro Swing, Barbieri LFP, Konica Minolta FD-5BT, Konica-Minolta FD-9. If your device is not in this list, check with the manufacturer if you have a colorimeter rather than a spectrophotometer. Colorimeters are not generally useful for G7 calibration or for creating high quality output profiles. Does this software work directly with Pantone Color Matching System? Sort of. Output profiles on the Fiery server work with the Pantone system. The Fiery server is licensed to use the Pantone libraries and is Approved by Pantone as Pantone calls it. If you use Fiery Color Profiler Suite for profiling and you have some critical Pantone colors to match for your customers, you can optimize the spot colors using the Device Link module of Fiery Color Profiler Suite. Please go over reference profiles you would use for non-brightened stock for G7. I assume you are in a proofing workflow running non-oba (Optical Brightening Agent) containing proofing paper. The profiles made with M0 measurement mode (GRACoL 2009, SWOP3 2009 and SWOP5 2009, ISO Coated / Fogra 39L) are the best match to those stocks; although it is very likely those profiles were made from stocks containing OBAs. Shops run non-brightened proofing media and measure in the old M2 mode mainly because they have non-uv light booths that don t comply with ISO 3664:2009. Before 2009 it was the standard to keep UV out of light booths and out of measurements so that the proof would match the prints, even those made on OBA-containing production substrate since without UV radiation in the light booth, the OBA s have no brightening effect. Modern practice is to measure in M0 mode on a spectrophotometer and view prints in a modern light booth that has the UV radiation defined in 3664 2009. If you want to be very precise you would measure in M1 mode for profiling and print verification, and then the standards would be the CGATS CPGC data which is the basis for GRACoL 2013, SWOP 2013, and the Fogra 51 and Fogra 52 datasets (which are the basis for PSO coated and PSO uncoated profiles used in Europe and other regions outside the U.S.). We have three identical KM presses. All with external Fiery servers and all with Graphics Arts Package. All have been G7 certified by KMBS. We'd like to learn the best method to match color from press-to-press using Color Profiler Suite. G7 will match the highlights to midtones in tonality and neutrality as you have probably already seen. If you want a complete visual match including saturated colors we recommend you try the Print Match feature of Fiery Color Profiler Suite. It has a function designed specifically to match identical presses and controllers. Canon C10000 with EFI B5000 RIP. What steps do I do on the Canon (auto gradation, auto tone correct, correct shading?), what steps do I perform in Command WorkStation (calibrate?), what steps do I perform in EFI Color Profiler Suite? Please consult Canon about the order of the steps. Generally you perform the manufacturer-specified engine calibrations on a regular basis, perhaps weekly. Then you calibrate the Fiery DFE from Command WorkStation more frequently, probably every day for a stock that you will print on. If you cannot get clarification on the engine calibration procedure steps and order, please post on the Fiery Forums so we can get Canon experts involved and get your question about engine calibration answered. 8
What is the ideal order of steps to take to calibrate for a specific paper type? For example, I currently run Auto Color Calibration on my Ricoh, followed by DEMS, followed by the Calibration option on the Fiery with my EFI ES-2000. That is exactly right. Consult Ricoh about the order of the steps and the frequency with which you need to do the engine calibrations. I think you will find you can do this occasionally but regularly, maybe every week or month. Then perform a Fiery calibration every day for each paper type if you will be printing on it to maintain consistent color output. I would like to understand how adjusting the target densities and curves in Command WorkStation can yield better output. The only reason maximum densities can be edited is for use in legacy workflows. You always want to get all the gamut range you can, so using the values that were measured when you made a calibrations set for a particular paper is always best. Remember that you need to make calibrations and ideally output profiles for each stock or at least each stock type (uncoated, coated, coated heavy, etc.). As far as adjusting tone curves in the output profile this is just a last-minute fix and is never advised since you will lose track of which edits were used with which jobs and have trouble matching for re-prints of the job. If you have made a calibration and profile for each paper the results should look great. You can then verify prints for their precision at matching a press standard, and if you do this regularly then you ll know when you aren t matching the standard and re-profile or take other steps before you run jobs that may be rejected for color quality issues. Can I use EFI profile software to create profiles for other RIPS like Prime PROOF? You can use Fiery Color Profiler Suite to profile any device that you can print a PDF on. Just choose the PDF workflow in the Printer Profiler module after you choose the Start from the Beginning option. Why does the low-end EFI Fiery Rip (Command WorkStation) for Xerox 7875 not include the option to use Adobe Postscript engine, which speeds up rip time factor 16 in our instance? The Fiery RIP is attached to the printer. Command WorkStation is just the client, and you can run it on any number of workstations in your shop and they will all access the same Fiery RIP. I think what you are asking about is APPE which is the Adobe PDF Print Engine. APPE is off by default to give better PostScript performance, but if you are running PDF files you should enable it. You can do this with a Server preset, in a Virtual Printer, or a Hotfolder workflow if you don t want to enable it manually job-by-job. Is G7 available on Kyocera MFPs? Yes, provided you have Fiery Color Profiler Suite. Is this presentation more geared toward print houses or people using a fiery printer in an office? This is mainly for print houses or others that need consistent high-quality color printing. It would benefit an office environment too but it s hard to get office staff to do regular calibration of the Fiery server unless IT is responsible. What is the daily start up routine that includes calibration among other adjustments? Please consult your dealer about the order of the steps and the frequency with which you need to do the engine calibrations. I think you will find you can do this occasionally but regularly, maybe every week or month. Then perform a Fiery calibration every day for 9
each paper type if you will be printing on it to maintain consistent color output. I would like to know what the standard settings are for great color photos. For the best photo output, enable Use Embedded Profiles on the Fiery server so that the profiles embedded into the photos are used. Minimally you should calibrate the Fiery server and use a factory profile, but for best results you would create a custom calibration set using G7 then a custom profile for a high quality media (perhaps a satin finish coated sheet 150 GSM or higher) and print with this calibration and profile. Remember you should also re-calibrate on this media every day to keep color output consistent. Is this only relevant if you print from scanning? And if you are a printer? We are a marketing dept. Custom calibration and profiling are relevant no matter the source (scans, digital photos, design files, or PDFs). If you need to create high-quality color prints consistently then this could benefit your marketing department too. Is Ricoh c651 certified? Yes, please see < https://www.idealliance.org/certification/digital-press-certification/certified-systems/>. C651 has a Digital Press Certification from Idealliance as well as a Fogra Certification. Neither of these programs confirm that your press matches a reference like GRACoL or is G7 calibrated. This needs to be done on your press on the paper you choose to print in your shop environment. If you do this you could choose to apply for G7 Master Qualification for your shop. I am new to digital printing. I would like to learn the basics about color calibrating but I don't know where to start. Could you point me towards a "for dummies" place to start? You can view more sessions on our YouTube World of Fiery webinar playlist, especially the recording on "3 Key Steps to Get Your Color Right" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25k2me45ghu&index=37&list=plfn1e2vyylrnbrkqiwoowui-xv9yt0dpv> You can also access free Fiery elearning at http://www.efi.com/training-and-services/training/fiery-elearning and become Fiery Professional certified. What s the difference between Fiery and G7 calibration? Fiery calibration calibrates the color channel so that they are linear to the human eye. G7 calibration calibrates the color channels so that the black channel and the 3 colors (CMY) have specific tone targets (those from the original SWOP profile that most color separations have been made with for about 20 years) as well as being gray balanced. Would want to ensure drums, etc. are in very good shape as well? That s the age-old question when calibrating any press. Should I put new blankets on my offset press? Change the drums on my digital press? There is no right answer except to say that if you calibrate with everything new it will probably work best when everything is new again. If you calibrate at the end of the life of these consumable parts then your calibration will probably be optimal the next time the part near end of life. The best choice I think is to do this somewhere in the middle of the life of the parts. 10
What version of Color Profiler Suite is this? During the session, we used Fiery Color Profiler Suite version 4.9.3. What level of experience as a designer/printer would you recommend the operator should have in order to use this device to its capacity? We design the system so even beginners can use it. A more experienced operator may do it a bit faster but they will have no advantage in terms of the results. Can I have the Curve software on my Mac and check the data from the Fiery? Or is this better to run the software on the RIP? You can run Curve software wherever you want, you just have to measure there or save the measurements so that the machine where Curve is running can access it. Generally running extra software on the Fiery machine can be a drag on resources and therefore RIP performance, so do it on another machine if you can. What kind of volume should a business be producing per month to justify having this tool in store? It depends on the quality the print buyers are demanding. Is the volume low because the work is very high quality? Or perhaps it is low because the color quality or consistency is lacking? Either of those would be cases where the system could be justified even for a low volume operation to keep quality high or to improve quality and quality tracking to attract more business. Why is the RGB set to photographic? RGB images can have a much larger gamut than the output profile, so Photographic (aka perceptual in ICC terms) is safest. It will prevent shadows from plugging up if you have a very high dynamic range image in a large space like AdobeRGB(1998). Relative Colorimetric technically gives better color precision if you are willing to take the chance losing some shadow detail or if you know you have either a smaller gamut RGB images coming in, a fairly large gamut output gamut, or both. How does this process affect the traditional paper profiling in Color Profile Suite? Would I need to perform a G7 calibration on each paper type? Ideally yes. Just as you need to make a calibration set for each paper to use with the profile (and to make re-calibration fast and easy), if you choose to do G7 then you should do it with each calibration and profile you create. Because the subsequent Fiery calibrations that you do regularly will take you back to G7, this is a great way to maintain gray balance and will give additional latitude to the output profiles so that they can be used for longer before having to re-profile. Does Color Profiler Suite include the G7 calibration or is that an additional module? G7 calibration is included in Fiery Color Profiler Suite, no added module is required. 11
If we own an ES-2000 and Fiery Color Profiler Suite 4.5, what does it cost to upgrade or get on service again so that we can use the new G7 certifications? You need to renew your Software Maintenance and Support agreement for Fiery Color Profiler Suite. Please post this question with your ES-2000 serial number to the Fiery Forums and we will help you figure this out. For digital G7 and offset G7, do we have to calibrate G7 for each paper? Yes, you need to make a calibration set for each paper to use with the profile. For offset you not only need to do the G7 per-paper type but you also need to figure out the solid ink densities that will get you in compliance with ISO 12647. 12647 has different target L*a*b* values for different paper types. Usually we adjust inking and water to get to the L*a*b* targets for 12647 in each color then we measure the target as density so the press operator can do makeready with the density measurements they are familiar with. Can we match our imac color on the screen with the Color Profiler Suite? Fiery Color Profiler Suite will make display profiles but it s a challenge to make this work perfectly without investing in a coloraccurate monitor and light booth. For offset, is G7 calibration for coated and uncoated sheets sufficient? That s what most shops do; maybe one more for matte paper if you run it often. At 4000 sheets per G7 calibration session, it s a pretty big investment to do every paper type you run especially if you have a full sheet press. I have to get the p2p target, Fiery Color Profiler Suite, and Curve4 to calibrate my Fiery to do G7 calibration? No, not at all. You just need Fiery Color Profiler Suite v.4.9. Curve3 software is not required for Fiery G7 calibration or verification as long as you have Fiery Color Profiler Suite. We only used it in the presentation to demonstrate that G7 works and that we do it with the calibration tables, which is technically required for the software to be certified by Idealliance. What are the positives in using this software along with the Fiery XF to reach G7 certification and maintain it? The software shown in this webinar is used to perform G7 calibration on cut-sheet toner print engines driven by Fiery controllers. The way to do this on XF for inkjet printers will be shown in the World of Fiery scheduled for September 13, 2017. The advantage is the same: calibrating the device to match the tonality and gray balance an ICC input profile expects means the output profile can work better and last longer before re-profiling is needed. For Xerox igen, where engine linearization is done not at the Fiery DFE, but at the engine, do you do that TRClin first, then at EFI with CPS, start right in with G7 cal, and at the Fiery, it is only the G7 cal that is applied? At the current time G7 calibration of igen is not possible since Fiery calibration is disabled and the calibration is performed on the press controller. EFI is working on a way to fix this for igen in the future. Can we do G7 Calibration in ColorProof XF for large Format printers? The World of Fiery on G7 calibration for Fiery XF will be on 13 September 2017. 12
Are the test forms for G7 provided for free? It seems you have to be a member of Idealliance to get those resources? Test forms used to be available on their website but it may be these are for members only. You ll need to check with them. Once G7 calibration is achieved on Fiery, do you only need to do standard calibration on a daily basis? Will this maintain my G7 calibration? Exactly. Calibrate daily as you do now and it will bring you back to G7 and back to the profile you created working as it did when you created it. Is G7 calibration applied to calibration table or ICC profile? G7 correction is in the calibration. To be G7 Certified by Idealliance, software must achieve G7 by creating 2-D LUTs (look up tables). Be aware of any software that wants to do it in the profile, this means you need to remake the profile to get back to G7. You don t want to have to measure profiling or more patches every day to get back to G7. How will we be able access the Wide Format Webinar on Sept. 13? Will an email notice be sent out? Check our webinar calendar at http://www.efi.com/about-efi/events/webinars-calendar/ - this is where you will find the September session listed. Will the G7 calibration work to match Pantone colors? I have a Versant 80 Press. To better match Pantone colors, make custom ICC profiles for the job stock you use, on your press, in its normal operating environment in your shop. If you use Fiery Color Profiler Suite for profiling, you can optimize the spot colors using the Device Link module of Fiery Color Profiler Suite. I work on Xerox cut sheet digital products with an ILS or Full Width Array. Are those devices sufficient for these processes or should I stick with the ES-2000? An ILS will work for G7 if you can see the device in Fiery Color Profiler Suite for calibration and profiling. It won t work if the press is an igen. At the current time, G7 calibration of igen is not possible since Fiery calibration is disabled and the calibration is performed on the press controller. EFI is working on a way to fix this for igen in the future. You also may not be able to access the FWA, but in general we would not recommend using a scanner for G7 calibration since colorimetric measurements are required. FWA is not recommended for profiling either. The EFI ES-2000 will give a much better result if you have one. How much does certification cost? If you mean Qualification for your shop (there is no shop Certification program) you have to check with Idealliance. Generally you have to pay a fee that varies based on whether you are a member and you need to pay a G7 Certified Expert (people can be G7 certified as can software but print shops get qualified not certified) to make the submission for you. If you mean the cost to get yourself Certified as a G7 Expert or Professional, you can find those fees on the Idealliance website. 13
If the idea is to create a color profile for the press, why would you export a file to standard GRACoL from a design application? Does it matter what profile you export a file to if the Fiery uses the embedded profile and converts to the G7 profile created? For the first part, you want to make CMYK files that you can print on any press now and in the future. If your idea is to save it in the press profile space you d have to save it for every paper profile on every press you want to run it on now or in the future. Storing it as GRACoL lets you save it once and run it on either digital or conventional print systems. For the second question, you could save CMYK as whatever you want if you always embed the profile and tell the DFE to respect it but this is a bad idea since you may need to run it on another print system in the future (maybe a conventional press with no color management) and then the embedded profile won t help you. Generally, if you ever need to print gray using black only so that CMYK jobs that you are billing as Black and White (that only contain grays) do not get billed to you as color clicks from the press manufacturer, you should not enable Use Embedded profiles for CMYK because the print gray using black only feature on the DFE may fail. Does this software work on a Mac? Yes, all Fiery client software is cross platform. Which halftone screening best for G7 On DFE digital? This completely depends on the press. We recommend you look at the list of Fiery print systems that have passed Idealiance Digital Press Certification. For each of these there is an Application Data Sheet (ADS) and you can look to see what halftone and other settings EFI experts used to pass the certification. These are generally the best settings for halftone and resolution. If someone works in CMYK to separate but converts back to RGB when done, will you be able to print at G7 level? You can print anything at the G7 level. Even if you do not convert the RGB back to CMYK, it would still print better with the calibration targeting the G7 tonality and gray balance and the printer profile does the rest to get the saturated colors to match the 12647-2 solids (that well calibrated offset presses match). Once you have the linearization, G7, and ICC done for the most part you just have to do linearization to keep G7 consistent. Does that hold true if you have to preventative maintenance (drum/developer) done on your press or do you have to rerun the G7? In general, yes. This isn t guaranteed but linearization of the Fiery server for the paper type you G7 calibrated and profiled should bring it back to match G7. You might want to experiment with the Fiery Color Profiler Suite Verify module. After you make the profile, do a verification against GRACoL using the Idealliance 3-row wedge. Print and save a copy of the verification report. After service, when you re-calibrate, verify again to see if your color is still matching the way it did when you first did the G7 calibration and profiling. Post a message on the Fiery Forums if you need help with this. I was told that the Fiery Color tools cover all of functions of Fiery Color Profiler Suite. If so, can I get G7 calibration with Fiery Color tools? Color Tools is part of Fiery XF. The World of Fiery on 13 September 2017 will go into details on this but if you want information sooner, please post a question on the Fiery Forums and we will respond. 14
Normally G7 is achieved with the correct paper or paper whitepoint. How is Color Profiler Suite compensating for the numerous types of paper? G7 calibration (including the way Fiery Color Profiler Suite does it) is substrate relative, meaning we make things look neutral on the paper you are calibrating and profiling. People often get confused and think they need to choose a stock that matches the G7 white point. This makes little sense because you want to print on the paper you or your customer prefers. We always tell our users that if you want to use a substrate that does not match the white point of the reference, the best bet when verifying is to ignore the paper white Delta E ( E) or make a custom tolerance set for the ISO-12647-8 (wedge) verification with paper white E removed. The other option is to use Paper Simulation when you print, which will simulate the source paper white on your paper white. But unless you are selling proofs of offset print runs, you will not make a production print that you can sell since your customers will reject a production print with paper white simulation they will see printed dots simulating the paper white in the non-image areas of the job. Does G7 calibration affect PMS library? When you make a custom output profile, you are making a custom profile for the Pantone colors to match on the paper and press for which you have made a calibration and profile. Pantone colors are already defined on the Fiery DFE in the licensed libraries from Pantone using device independent (L*a*b*) color appearance values. Will the presentation/ppt notes be available after the live broadcast? You can find a copy of the presentation, a link to the session recording and other resources presented during the session at http://webinar.efi.com/worldoffiery2017/apr12. 15