Test Phase - GRAY!?!?

[idealsupply]

Hi.

Struggling with GRAY...

Quick run down so far, we are using A-SUB ink, A-SUB Paper, A-SUB ICC profile direct from their website.

We have tried:

"photoshop > colour management > photoshop manages colour" - Selecting the ICC profile (When using this method & printing, often the black text has a very slight brown outline to it, when zoomed in on PS you can see it)
"photoshop > colour management > printer manages colour" - Selecting the ICC profile (When using this method & printing, its 99% perfect apart from gray)

We cannot get gray to work...

For most other colours we get the best results with "printer manages colour" with the ICC set as default.

Using EPSON ET-1810 printer + Photoshop.
Paper type EPSON MATT > HIGH QUALITY > NO COLOUR CORRECTION

We have tried CMYK, 0,0,0,30ish, we have tried Grayscale, running out of ideas.

What looks gray on screen, presses with either a green tinge sometimes blue, purple brown.

We are sublimating onto a Mug and Elephant teddy, both items we have sublimated 100's of.

Ideas??????

[pw66]

RGB only.
Your printer is expecting an RGB file which it converts to match the inkset.

Also if using a MAC printing with ICC profiles doesn't work well - the O/s converts to its own internal profile.

[idealsupply]

We are normally printing via RGB, I was just listing things we have tried.

Typically we open Photoshop in Adobe RGB > Printer manages colour (with A-SUB INK, ICC PROFILE)

I'm guessing I should contact A-SUB.

We are looking into getting an oven system, and also a new printer, but I want to be confident I can resolve these types of issues prior.

[AGS]

I've used various different manufacturers inks in various different printers (non sublimation) over the years and grey is always problematic.

Even a 99% black becomes a composite color meaning it is mixed from CMYK - in an ideal world you want greys to be mixed with black and white with a hint of the CM or Y to produce tints but obviously not possible

You think of cyan magenta and yellow as being 'set' colours but different manufactures ink sets differ quite dramatically - for example Fuji CMYK inks looked like you would expect to the eye but with Nazdar inks the yellow was almost mustard

That's when the profile comes in but I've seen some greys which always have a green tint and others with a pink tint depending on which brand

Not much help I know but good greys can suffer from the limited gamut of different ink sets

[idealsupply]

Thanks for the info.

We printed a few color charts, and picked the color that most resembled gray, it wasn't the best gray I've seen but it was passable for the phase our business is in right now.

I've reached out to the supplier of inks, the .pdf instructions are different to the website instructions (typical lol), so I will try what they suggest:

(In printer settings we have been using - No Color Management, with the ICC being set as default within settings) - As shown on their website: ICC Profile (a-sub.com)

In the .pdf they are suggestion to use ICM setting on the color correction. We will run some tests tonight, hopefully this resolves our issues???

[pw66]

Looking at the a-sub profile link you supplied they suggest you set print quality to 'standard' but in your original post you say you are using 'high quality'. I happens with some paers that less is more.

I get good greys when I print from Affinity designer but the downside is that some of the other colours are not so good. With other software I get a slight brown tinge in the greys, but better colours and a perfect dense black. Swings and roundabouts of sublimation unfortunately.

[idealsupply]

Good point!

We found high quality gave us better color depth, but I must admit we didn't tweaking the paper settings with gray.

Will try again today with A-Sub's ICC they just emailed and their new .pdf instructions.