We've been using our GT-541 for about 2 years and I'm not really happy with the quality of the colors, especially when printed on "light" non-white shirts. It seems to me that the colors just don't "POP" like they do with screen printing. I can't seem to make a RED look like a Cherry Red. Maybe it's the fact that there's no sheen to this process which mutes the printed designs. Any thoughts / suggestions? I use Corel Draw X3 for artwork.
Thanks-
Robin
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Muted colors, that's exactly how I'd describe our results. But why would Photoshop be more vibrant than Corel Draw? I do have Corel Photopaint which I believe is Corel's equivalent to Photoshop. But it seems strange that Corel Draw should have that problem, doesn't it? I'll bet a lot of GT-541 users use Corel Draw. However, that's why I posted this worrysome problem hoping for suggestions such as this. Keep 'em coming!
Robin
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Corel using a different color engine than Adobe. A general rule for most dtg printers that allow you to print directly from a graphic softwae program is that Photoshop does a better job with the colors than CorelDraw. The other thing is Corel treats vector objects and raster images differently. That is why I recommend that you print out both a vector and raster color charts so you know what the possible color range is.
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Photoshop is a raster program and Coreldraw is vector based program,now we only use Corel for single color jobs,Go to Great Dane graphics .com and get a free sample and print it and see how that comes out,for us they come out just like what you see on the screen in Photoshop if you ever go to ISS shows or SGIA you should take some of Danes classes to learn how to do it.
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Corey Nydegger www.sharkteesinc.com Design on line and new lower DTG Contract printing prices
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Would you suggest if you are designing in corel converting it to a bitmap and then printing it in photoshop? I've been using smart designs templates, the digital graphics series are great dane artwork (raster) with vector components that you can change such as lettering. I'm finding that the raster objects print beautifully in corel but I need to change the colors in the vector objects to match the palattes that I have printed from the 541 palette. I also just printed a job where the customer provided me a pdf file of vector artwork. I panicked when I saw that there was maroon in the design because when I looked at my printed color charts there was no such color. For the heck of it I just printed their graphic and it was perfect. When I broke apart the vector group it said it was maroon 195, spot color. Not being from the screen printed world I have no clue as to what this is. I can't find it under another palette. To print the lettering for the shirts I copied this maroon and everything matched, but where are these hidden colors hiding?????
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
I think that your working colour profile in Photoshop is different to Corel.
If I want to saturate my colours I use a different input profile on the RIP, this isn't rocket science.
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Quote:
Originally Posted by PositiveDave
I think that your working colour profile in Photoshop is different to Corel.
If I want to saturate my colours I use a different input profile on the RIP, this isn't rocket science.
Ok, well for those of us who are trying to get the best colors out of their new brother 541, there is a huge learning curve when it comes to color management. I'm spending a ton of time trying to learn as much as possible since I don't come from a screen printing background. There is no RIP program for the brother without spending thousands, so this might as well be rocket science.
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Hey there, Kathy! Like you, I have not always been impressed with the colors that come out of my machine, and I tweak this stuff all the time!
Personally, I think the best place for you to start is to begin exporting your images from Corel as TIFF files (or any other common format that Corel supports; I stopped using it when I went digital, a few years ago), and then opening them in Photoshop to perform some final adjustments. Try an image with lots of vibrant colors in Corel; I bet you will notice that the raster version is going to look a lot more muted in Photoshop, right off the bat. This may be how the printer output is interpreting the file!
From there, go to Image > Adjustment > then find either Levels / Curves / or Brightness & Contrast - any one of these could be useful to help you bring out the most from your images. If you need any help, let me know, and I will go into more detail. I am no Photoshop expert by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I certainly scratch by! Hand over fist, it wins against Corel.
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Go to 'Preferences' in PS and find what colour profile you are using. I use AdobeRGB1998.
Go to the Tools>Colour Management in Corel (mine is default to a bunch of generic profiles and a working space of sRGB, sRGB is a small dull gamut invented by HP & Microsoft) set the working profile to the same as PS.
Your ''generic' CMYK printer profile may cause a problem so disable that and use the ICC in the Brother driver. Experiment a bit. Try choosing the Brother profile?
If your colour profiles are the same, you will get the same colour from each programme.
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Thanks Justin and Dave, this is very helpful. I guess part of my frustration comes from knowing that there are colors that this printer can print such as this maroon 195 and I just don't know how to find them. All I keep hearing is print color palettes/ profiles and then use those to choose the colors you want to print. This makes perfect sense and works well until I try to find a color such as this mysterious maroon. By luck the customer gave me the artwork that had the color, and again it works great, and now I have a perfect maroon to add to my palette. I just want to find the other colors
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
I always have issue that Corel/Ai files color just suck, why I don't use either anymore...
Strictly use Photoshop and I am very satisfied with results, Corel/Ai seem to mute contrast by 18 percent compared to Photoshop, and not a "profile issue i.e CMKY/RGB
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Have you got a dot gain setting in AI/Corel.
My CS4 AI tells me that the settings across my CS4 suite are not synchronised i.e. that I'm going to get different colours from my different packages.
Colour Management is a pretty simple concept that is widely abused.
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
Commercial process printing will get gain often on black and cyan channels, which is why Photoshop and illustrator both offer ways to correct the color profile for the printer's color bias. I'm used to topping off the black channel by 20% and the cyan channel by 10-15% to get a print that looks right for process silkscreen printing (and for the Kornit as well).
Usually I work with a range of pantone color pieces to adjust color on a monitor and to adjust color in prints. When the pantone swatches match the print - I let it go.
Re: Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing
ALSO!
Silkscreen color is spot color. A printer that gives you any kind of process color is approximating a color by blending inks.
I don't know your printer, but even if it has 6 inks, the 'color gamut' is much more limited than that of a spot color. An ink can be very very bright. But no color printed by a process printer can be brighter than the color of any of the inks being used to print with. That's why CMYK prints tend to have no really bright blues or purples: when you blend two colors you reduce color brightness (and cmyk blues are a combination of cyan and magenta - the green aspect of cyan mixed with the red aspect of magenta makes a desatuating hint of 'mud' with every blue.
Here's an RGB image, nice and bright as you could ever see online, as designed in Illustrator (by myself):
Here's the SAME image, the ONLY difference is that I saved it as a CMYK image before saving it for the web. It demonstrates the BEST quality a CMYK printer could deliver. I'm sure you'll notice the colors are dulled, especially the blues.
Design colors don't "pop" like screen printing 
Hand over fist, it wins against Corel.
