Ricoh GX 3300N red colour problem

[Asterix]

hi i have Ricoh GXe3300n and although i use a windows machine i too can confirm that I have had nothing shorter than a nightmare with the Power driver. It may not be the power drivers fault/problem though. I think the issue stems from the fact that Ricoh/ sawgrass Gel inks require slightly less time, and I mean slightly. first you need to go back to your original mug press setting times, and then bring the temp down by around 30 and try that. all mug machines are different, all mug blankets are different. this is trial and error, so you need to go back to the setting you had before that were working and drop the temp a little, try 30 at first, this worked for me. don't go dropping all times and heat settings, this will get you muddled. your machine worked before so now you need to compensate because of the change of ink. The pressure shouldn't be changed or the time, just the heat.

secondly the image, all Ricoh images are in my opinion not good, they are blurred, what makes it worse for the Power driver is the sheer way they have set the paper type to a brand(this i don't like) where is the Matt setting?? but this doesn't help you. can i ask where you did the images in the first place, Corel, photoshop?

I am along way from being sorted with my own ricoh,and am using a Epson 1400 with Ciss and Rotech Inks. However I am trying to get it so i can do all with my Ricoh.

my issues are the fact i have all mine with the Epson/ Photoshop/Rotech profile and not only that but I printed all mine in the final stage through MS word. There are others on here in the same boat .

but this isn't helping you. one thing i have noticed and its a good thing is Ricoh normally prints whats on the screen, something i found impossible with my former set up with Rotech, ICC Profile, mostly my issue was Blue but i spent a long time getting colours right. including making a mug with RBG colour swatches for Blue, i got that advice on a forum
Because i use word, i am sticking with it and trying various things to get my old prints sorted.

you could try opening the image in your software, Corel or photoshop and playing around with the Hue and saturation, you can do all three colours/ global or try the red on its own and increase or decrease. the other thing is the gelsprinter driver configuration has a colour density option in the management, you could try increasing this by one. remember this may not work for all images and you need to remeber you fiddled around with this, they are normally set to 5 on all. I have set my black to 6 and seem to be getting slightly sharper images

the other thing is when you open the image in the software, choose the embedded profile option and not change it.

all these may help you. as i said i am a long way from sorting my issues out but colours and printing is fine, its just detail on the prints that my issue.

hope this helps

[John G]

all Ricoh images are in my opinion not good, they are blurred,

Got to disagree with that statement - do you mean that all YOUR ricoh images are blurred. Mine are't blurred, if they were I couldn't sell the items I print.

[Asterix]

John you seem to have taken that out of context with the rest of the post

all my images i made with the origianl ICC sawgrass Rotech Ink profile are blurred when printed with Ricoh compared to Epson. They are awful. fine when i start from scratch and use the Ricoh/powerdriver.

trouble is I am just about to startup again and to anyone that has over 2000 images made with the old profile like I have are in for a good old time.

I don't think there's much thought been put into the Power driver,it seems to me to be very pushed towards a certain type of paper and and Inks, doesn't seem to be any support or knowledge for people that are changing their systems


edit, got to add when i say Blurred, i mean they arn't as sharpe as printed with the old system i had, but i will remedy it.

[edmond1815]

Hi Asterix,
thank you for your sugestions.
You're right with Ricoh images, they are not sharp, like Epson.
So, my problem is in general with red colour. I can't obtain a pure red color, or close to red. All reds become pink, mangenta.
This is not a press problem, i am sure, i tested in many ways.
Not a problem with printer or computer.
I tested on diferrent computers, Macs or Windows with same results, with PowerDriver or ICC.
The problem is from ICC profile, and i really don't know how other people who have Ricoh systems are so happy and with no problem.
I bought 8 systems, and have exactly same problem with red.
Now, i'm waiting for a person to make me a custom icc profile and hope to resolve the problem.
It is very frustrating, i tried to reduce mangenta from driver (from 5 to 3 or 2), to increase other color like black, etc), i tried to modify image in Photoshop, press temperature,
Windows, Mac, all a man can do. All is about profile, i am very sure, and after that i will contact Sawgrass to remove they wrong profiles from site.
Yes they have wrong profiles !
Is there somebody in this world, who use Mac OS 10.6, Photoshop CS4 or CS5 with Ricoh sublimation system and has good results with red?

Thank you again to all for help and keepin' touch!

[bms]

Have to disagree with these posts. Our images are just as sharp comparing Epson and Ricoh and we've printed with numerous A4 & A3 Epson printers as well as the GXe3300 and GXe7000 printers. The photo acrylic blocks which are sold into a major high street photography chain and they print using Ricoh printers with crisp vibrant end results.

Clearly you guys have some issues printing. An image isn't created with a profile, only used to change colours when printing. With the red issue have you tried changing your image to CMYK rather than RGB?

[Asterix]

fair enough Martin, but you've got to admit there are so many different combinations with peoples Computers, Profiles, Ink, Printers, heat sublimation machines, and paper that concluding what an issue could be isn't easy at all.

edmond you could try what i did once, I had so many issues with blue with Rotech inks, that i sat down one day and looked at wiki page of Blue colours this page

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue

my problem was everytime i printer Blue it came out a shade of purple

so from that list i made three mugs, with all the Blues that i wanted, using a swatch method, little squares with the Hex number. they took me nearly a day to make. i used around 12 mugs as the first few i made some came out purple, but gradually i removed these and in the end I have three perfect mugs with all the blues I could ever possibly want.

you could try this with reds, its only a suggestion. My business is on a shoestring and i have other people designing my stuff, saying do it for me in light blue or dark blue didn't work because their perception of blue was different to my set up even though they worked on the basis of the same profile, because once it was printed on with the rotech ink and sublimated it was a different colour.

you say your reds are Pink, so obviously you need to go darker and brighter

here is the red page http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red

have a look at what red/pink you are currently producing on your sublimated item and go darker and brighter

I realise this is a bit hit and miss for you especially if you have intricate designs already made up, but doing it this way saved me a lot of headaches and quite a bit of money

[John G]

Just a thought, has either of you that are having problems ever had your monitors calibrated ?

What I mean is, just because it looks bright red on screen, doesn't necessarily mean its going to print vivid red.

[Asterix]

Just a thought, has either of you that are having problems ever had your monitors calibrated ?

What I mean is, just because it looks bright red on screen, doesn't necessarily mean its going to print vivid red.

thats an extremely good point John, as when i had issues with my Blues being Purple, someone on a another forum pointed out that it might be an idea to turn red up on my laptop screen, which is what i use for designs. you might think why would turning up red help? well my blues were coming out purple, so by turning up red, i knew that if it was blue on my screen there was no possiblity of it being purple as the red was turned up. sounds weird i know.

trying to think what would work for Edmund though, i suppose with all his previous designs this may or may not help.

mine was in my Nvidia control settings

must add it was only a slight change

[John G]

i suppose with all his previous designs this may or may not help.

Yes, but the profiles only control the printer, they don't make any changes to the image, so i'm a bit confused.

[Asterix]

it would if he's making new ones, what i saying is if he going to go down the route of changing his designs (which i wouldn't do) he could try this.. I was lucky most of my designs with blue were all saved PSDs and all layers were separate, which i always do, changing the blue was a synch. hemay not be in that position.

if i was him, the machine temp settings aside, I would experiment with shades of red. he doesn't want to be changing to much. Edmund if you do change your current images, i would copy every single image you already have to another folder. this is what i have done and then have all my current images to a Ricoh folder incase I ever go back to using Rotech ink,which i do anyway on my epson 1400

what amazes me is how some of you open up an image prepared for rotech inks with a ICC sawgrass profile and then say it works by using the power driver and the correct Subli-r profile. if only.....this didn't work for me at all. all colours were too light, by a vast distance. how can a profile decide what you used before and somehow correct it. for instance i used as stated above different shades of blue to get my desired effect. how would changing the profile fix that.