With the continuous development of digital proofing technology, color management software has become more and more powerful in the control of output colors. N-Color and drop control technology will further improve the ability of color management software to control printing equipment.
The traditional digital proofing color management is based on the CMYK2LAB2CMYK model. When performing color control on four or more color printing devices, reasonable control cannot be performed based on actual print media conditions. Only CMYK conversion can be performed by the software default mode. Now Blackmagic V3. 3 The newly adopted N-Color model and ink droplet control technology can directly control the amount of ink to be discharged per ink, ink droplets, how much light ink and dark ink to use, how to combine large, medium, and small ink droplets, etc. , Which greatly enhanced the color control capabilities, configure different ink droplets for different media combinations, in order to achieve the best color effects.
Print ink drops and resolution
Regardless of variable droplet technology, the physical resolution of the inkjet printing device is determined by the size of the printer's droplet and the distance between the printed droplets. The size of the print ink droplet is the diameter of the print ink after it has spread to the surface of the medium, and is related to the volume of the ejected ink droplet and the coating on the surface of the medium. The distance between the print ink droplets in the lateral direction and the distance between the ink drop nozzles and the print grating are related, and the distance in the longitudinal direction is related to the step length of the print stepper motor. The printing resolution of the printing device is related to the distance between the ink droplets, whether it is 720dpi or 1440dpi, the ink droplet size is the same, and the printing resolution of 1440dpi is more dense than that of 720dpi, but if the printing medium is It is not very good. The diffusion radius of the printing ink droplets is too large. When the ink droplets overlap with each other more, even if the printing resolution is improved, the actual physical resolution will not be improved. Therefore, different media surfaces are suitable for different conditions. The print resolution, not the higher the print resolution, the quality of the print image will certainly increase, on the contrary too dense droplets can easily cause the ink droplets can not be fully absorbed, affecting the image quality.
The smaller the volume of ink droplets is, the smaller the radius of the ink droplets is ejected onto the surface of the medium, but at the same time, the lighter color density is also shallower. Therefore, more dense ink droplets are needed to achieve the color density of large ink droplets. The three small ink droplets show the effect of a large ink droplet, the edges of which have no large ink droplets, and the printing speed is also slowed down. Different media, showing different density require different sizes of ink droplets, variable ink technology can To achieve the use of large, medium and small ink droplets.
The gray-scale resolution of the printing ink droplets refers to the number of distinguishable colors that a certain color ink droplets can exhibit from light to dark, and it also determines the number of colors that can be displayed. The more saturated the print ink drops, the greater the density range and the larger the print gamut. The greater the gray level that printable ink drops can discern, the richer their color performance is. The printer will generally increase the light color ink to improve the gray level resolution. The light color ink droplets can better represent the midtones and high-profile images, making the visually sensitive midtones more abundant and the transition more smooth.
Different media require different ink droplet sizes, distances between ink droplets, and dark ink droplets and light-colored ink droplets. Too many ink droplets will cause poor absorption of the paper, and the density will decrease with the increase of the number of ink droplets. Different media have different degrees of ink absorption and color rendering properties, so different paper control needs to be different. Medium and small ink droplets and dark and light ink droplets combine to achieve the largest color range and richest color expression of ink droplets, while Blackmagic's ink droplet control technology can better control the large and medium size of printing equipment. , small droplets, and combinations of dark and light droplets.
N-Color model and print color control
Digital image files are generally in RGB or CMYK format. For printed images, the CMYK format is generally used, but the CMYK color of the printing device ink and the CMYK of the printing ink on the paper are not consistent with each other in the hue. There will be differences, such as the printing equipment on the media to show the product to be saturated than the printed product, you need to use the printed product and yellow to express the printed product. For a four-color device, using the CMYK2CMYK model will perform well and the print ink ratio can be clearly controlled. However, if the printing device is six colors or more, the general color management software can only provide CMYK points. The color model is adjusted, and it is impossible to accurately know the use of dark ink droplets and light ink droplets. When the curve of the product is pulled to 50%, the operator cannot know how many deep products and how many light products to express. 50% of the product, but using the Blackmagic V3.3 N-Color color separation model is directly controlled according to the ink ratio of the printing equipment, providing a control curve for each color ink, you can clearly know how much dark ink droplets and Shallow ink drops allow operators to control colors more accurately.
The N-Color color separation model combined with ink drop control technology allows the operator to control the different colors in the image to be represented by different ink droplets, to make up for the insufficiency of the traditional four-color control technology, and to allow digital proofing adjustment and control capabilities. Strong.
Author: Zhou Chang Xing
Reprinted from: Digital Printing