The ink setting and printer settings selected influence the gamut of the printer and how the inks are controlled. Each ink setting has corresponding printer settings which must be configured for use with a specific ink set. The printer settings should not be changed from those recommended unless advised by an AVA technician.
First, click on the Colour Separation button in the tool bar or choose Queue Menu > Colour Separation. A sheet will open with a selection of generic settings to be configured.
- Ink Setting - lists all ink settings placed in the ink settings folder located at: Home / Library / Application Support / AVA Digital Print RIP / Ink Settings. Select the one to be used with the active queue.
When you select this menu, you have the option to ‘Choose Other…’
Use this option to navigate to an ink setting which is not in the Ink Settings folder mentioned above.
- Channel Order - override the physical ink order in the printer to better match your spot printed files. An example of when you would use this is when printing the InkLoadingTest chart ahead of creating an ink setting.
Your chart may be set up to print Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, but your printer may print Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow. Instead of changing your layer order in the file, you can alter the channel order of the printer. Simply input the physical channel numbers in the order you want them to print.
For the example above, the channel order would be input as 2,3,4,1.
- Ink Level - determines how much ink the printer puts down on to your substrate.
- Dither pattern - choose from AVA Dither 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. Different dither patterns reduce the possibility of banding effects when printing with variable dot as well as allowing the pass level to be reduced.
Note: There is no standard dither pattern because the ink type, substrate and number of passes used all influence the dither pattern, and we encourage you to do test prints to determine which one works best for you.
As an indication to the difference between Dither 5 and Dither 6, please see the snapshot below. Small dots are red, medium dots are blue and large dots are black:
Note: A new ink setting will be required prior to using a new dither pattern as it changes the Dot Gain characteristics of the printer.
- Dither Scale - add noise to existing dither patterns to reduce banding issues caused by blocked heads, damaged nozzles, uneven media and deflections. Choose from the scale of 1 – 5, with 1 being very fine noise and 5 being quite coarse. Changing the Dither Scale setting does not require a new ink setting but a new printer profile will need to be created.
- Do not print tones less than - allows you to remove light dot coverage which causes obvious dither patterns on some printers. The tone level you choose is a compromise between clean prints and colour accuracy. When creating icc profiles, set the percentage back to 0% to print the 855 target with a true tonal representation and avoid any colour clipping caused by removing the light dots.