Simulate another printer

Simulate another printer

Simulating another printer can be useful in case a printer is replaced by another printer and repeating work has to be exactly reproduced. Especially spotcolors are vunerable as they are moved inside the gamut of the printer. When the old printer its gamut is significantly different from the new printer the spot color reproduction might also be significantly changed (e.g. new printer has a larger gamut than the old one).

Start by selecting a printer and print mode that represent the new printer or print condition. Right click on the print mode to open context menu with special functions. From the context menu select “Simulate Printer”.

After which the configuration screen appears where the printer and print mode to simulate are chosen.

There are 2 types of links possible: Keep Separation / Visual Match:

  • Keep Separation : When the printer to simulate and the target printer are very similar in ink-type and colors this option gave the best reproduction as the separations are left as-is and the ‘feel’ of the output is preserved.
  • Visual Match : In case the printers are different then this method gives a close as possible match between them based on the colorimetric values, but the separation will look quite different.

Behaviour

The created print mode behaves in all application (like Editor, Layout, Hotfolder queue) the same as the simulated printer. In Calibrator this is different as it presents the gamut of the simulated printer, but has as output the ink-set of the target printer.

Recalibration

Recalibrating a simulation mode will recalibrate the simulated gamut on the target printer. This means that Calibrator will try to come as close as possible to the simulated gamut using the method chosen during creation (Keep Separation or Visual Match). As long the simulated gamut is smaller than the target gamut there is no problem. When the target gamut is smaller than on the compressed areas this might lead to visible breaks during (multi iteration) recalibrations.

Spot colors

Spot colors are converted first to simulated printer; thus retaining the same mapping to the gamut when the color is out of gamut. After the conversion the resulting color is mapped to the target printer.

This 2-step approach prevents that spot colors could suddenly deliver better, but different, colors when the target gamut is larger or differently shaped.


    • Related Articles

    • My Printer is Errored or Disconnected From the RIP

      When your printer is in a red state, it can halt your printing tasks. This article is meant to cover the most common solutions to these issues. The first step would be to note the error messages in the RIP that may be helpful. Error Message: No ...
    • Backup and restore Printer settings

      What is contained in a printer back-up? A backup of a printer is a ZIP file containing all the printer (or other output device) settings and all printer profiles: Printer settings (.xml) Printer profiles (*.PMM) Printer_restore file How to backup a ...
    • Recalibrating the Printer Profile

      Recalibration is the process of adjusting the existing PMM to the color shift that this printer has gone through. This color shift can have various reasons: Changing environmental conditions Degrading print heads Differences in media quality ...
    • Print from Windows to Virtual Printer on MacOS X

      On Mac, create your queue into RIP and make sure you checked “Register as a printer” option into the Layout tab Go to into “System Preferences->Sharing” and make sure you have “Printer Sharing” option checked : Go to into “System ...
    • Print from MacOS X to Virtual Printer on Windows

      On Win, create your queue into RIP and make sure you checked “Register as a printer” option into the Layout tab : Go to Windows “Start->Control Panel->Printers and Faxes” and right click on the name of the queue created at step 1. Choose “Sharing…” ...