What s New: ONYX Adds Support for New Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 Commercial Outdoor Printer. See ONYX at SGIA 08. ONYX named TOP 50 Winner

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1 September 2008 Issue What s New: ONYX Adds Support for New Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 Commercial Outdoor Printer ONYX Inc. announced a new printer driver for the new Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 commercial outdoor printer. Building upon the ONYX Color Engine and CMM (Color Management Module) ONYX co-developed with Epson a new dot pattern to maximize the quality of the GS6000 output. In addition, ONYX developed custom media profiles to meet Epson s stringent quality standards. This alliance between Epson and ONYX has allowed us to combine our newly developed Epson Stylus Pro printers with ONYX workflow software products in order to address the diversifying needs of print-for-pay users in the best possible way, comments Hiroshi Sotokawa, General Manager of Epson s Inkjet Business Product Planning Department. I m confident that this new combination of technologies will set a new standard for signage. For the full news release, click here. See ONYX at SGIA 08 Visit the ONYX booth, #2747, at SGIA 08 in Atlanta, October ONYX will be demonstrating the latest RIP software. The company will also be demonstrating an exciting new product that will save up to 40% of job preparation time and catch file problems before they go to production. Stop by the ONYX booth for a demo of this new product! ONYX named TOP 50 Winner ONYX is a TOP 50 winner, honored by Digital Output (link: readers as an industry innovator in The results were based on responses from readers about products and services mentioned in print ads, product reviews, editorial articles, as well as online ads, stories and articles.

2 Hooked On ONYX ONYX Customers Share Their Stories of Success Ditto Editions was started in 2003 by co-owners Nick and Susan Fader. Their combined experience in design, pre-press, and workflow provide them with skills uniquely appropriate for digital fine art reproduction. They are also artists themselves and use their own experience to help artists successfully promote and sell prints. When the company opened over 5 years ago they evaluated several RIP packages and found ONYX to be the most user friendly and efficient. To drive their newest addition, the Epson as well as their Epson 9600 and 9800 printers, Ditto Editions has recently upgraded to ONYX PosterShop 7.2. Coming from a graphic design and print background, Nick is well aware of the need for workflow in any art production operation. ONYX RIPCenter with ONYX Media Manager offered just the enhanced workflow he requires. Running several printers not only increases production but also ensures the quality control that is so vital in reproducing artists work. Our positive experience using ONYX made it an easy choice to stay with this superior brand when it came time to upgrade Explains, Nick Fader. We continually strive to keep up with technology; ONYX has enabled us to do it seamlessly while providing their own improvements, allowing us to maintain our reputation for providing fine art printmaking to the most discriminating artists. Ditto Editions continues to find that the ONYX user interface and speed allows jobs to move through quickly without sacrificing quality. Running ONYX PosterShop greatly reduces media and ink waste, enabling the company to better control costs. Most importantly, Ditto Editions clients are amazed by the final prints, with the help of custom profiling made possible by the ONYX system. Specializing in fine art digital giclée printmaking using ONYX PosterShop 7.2 brings unique value to Ditto Editions final product. Nothing less than truly archival, color accurate, clear images that preserve the integrity of the original artwork is acceptable, and ONYX helps them deliver on that promise.

3 Product Feature Focus: ONYX Color Engine for CMYKRGB and CMYKOG Advances have been made in the ONYX color engine for CMYKRGB and CMYKOG since version 7 was first released. Color is more consistent between printers, media, and ink sets. When comparing identical prints from CMYK, CMYKOG, and CMYKRGB printers, the overall color balance and accuracy are more consistent with the added advantage of the extra gamut of the n-color printers. It is not required to have additional knowledge to profile with the extra inks. Be aware however, that there will likely be extra ink load causing appropriate adjustments and restrictions to be made. Specific ICC swatches for CMYKOG and CMYKRGB ink sets are available to provide maximum accuracy and color when generating an ICC. Tech Tips Helpful Tips From the Experts Epson s CMYK+ ink set The Epson GS6000 ink set is CMYKOG, with additional light cyan and light magenta channels. The orange and green inks serve to enhance the printer s gamut. However, it should be noted that the addition of orange and green inks increase the complexity of printing and profiling as color editing tools will have six colors instead of four colors. CMYKOG gamuts are six dimensional (rather than four dimensional for CMYK), and therefore add many more possible combinations and should be accounted for when ink limiting and building ICC profiles. The added benefit of the orange and green ink is often best realized with images specifically designed to take advantage of the extra gamut. Max-imize Your Color Tips from our Color Scientist Max Derhak ICC Profile Swatch Choices When generating an ICC swatch you print a swatch, of color patches, measure the swatch, set up build options, and then the profile build engine thinks for a while (sometimes for a long while) before saving the profile. In the process of building a profile one often focuses on the profile build options and how to set them to get desired results. Certainly the profile build options affect what is happening while the number crunching is going on, but one of the biggest decisions related to how well a profile performs can be related to the choice you make when the ICC swatch is printed.

4 A significant portion of building a good profile involves having a good idea of how each and every possible ink combination relates its measured color. Establishing this relationship is known as defining a device characterization (since we are trying to determine the device s character or behavior for each ink combination). Having a good device characterization is essential to getting a good profile. A large part of defining a device characterization comes from the measurement of the patches on the swatch and the knowledge of how much ink goes into each patch. In most cases, every possible combination of ink is not printed in the swatch. Therefore, the expected measurement of colors that are not printed needs to be guessed at. Having more patches in a swatch can result in better device characterization since the gaps are smaller and there is less to guess about. (Note: In some instances, things like ink limiting and ink restrictions can make the guessing a lot more difficult). For CMYK profiling, the Profiling Lab at ONYX generally uses an Ultra Accuracy swatch for generating ICC profiles, since this provides the highest degree of sampling to provide the best device characterization while building the profile. Using a swatch with fewer patches can result in a larger possibility of having a less than perfect device characterization. In many cases there is a correlation between the time to print and measure the swatch and the accuracy in building a profile. Larger swatches can take more time, but they can also improve accuracy. For printers that have more than CMYK inks (like CMYKOG or CMYKRGB ink combinations found in more recent printers), there are two general categories of swatches that can be selected when printing the ICC swatch. Both options have pro s and con s with no one best choice for all situations. 1. Use a CMYK based swatch. If a CMYK image is printed to one of these printers without using ICC profiles, the CMYK ink combinations are re-separated using hard coded ink separation to make better use of the extra available ink channels. Because of this, it is possible to generate a CMYK profile for one of these printers, and then allow the hard coded ink reseparation to make use of the extra inks. Unless a swatch name identifies ink channels in its name, the swatch can be considered to be a CMYK swatch. The CMYK swatch choices are all selectable when profiling a CMYKOG or CMYKRGB printer.

5 Note: When using a CMYK profile with hard coded ink separation, the ink separation is not always optimal. Additionally, the device characterization information (used to display the soft proof of the image) does not actually represent the device since information about only four pseudo channels is maintained. Building a CMYK profile takes less time. Additionally, due to the nature of CMYK characterization, the profiles can be less affected by Ink Limiting and Ink Restrictions than CMYKOG and CMYKRGB profiles. The default swatch when profiling one of these printers is actually a CMYK based swatch. 2. Use a Swatch designed for the inks used by the printer. For a CMYKOG printer there will be a CMYKOG swatch, and for a CMYKRGB printer there will be a CMYKRGB swatch. In this case, different combinations of all the color channels available to the print mode are utilized by the swatch. CMYKOG and CMYKRGB swatches are organized differently than CMYK swatches in that they sample the possible ink percentages much more selectively. This is because with more channels comes a LOT more possible combinations. All possible combinations are covered, but the more likely combinations have more patches and the less likely combinations have fewer patches. This can result in more accurate results for some combinations and less accurate results for others. With a CMYKOG or CMYKRGB swatch it is possible to dynamically determine the ink separation in an attempt to define a more optimal ink separation. This option in the build settings is only selectable when a CMYKOG or CMYKRGB swatch is used to build the profile. Because more channels are being processed building a CMYKOG or CMYKRGB profile can take significantly longer to build.