The substrate is a set of figures that allow ColourSys to calculate the colour of the background paper used. This is normally the colour of the paper or fabric used to print on, or what we usually see as white.
AVA Printing White and AVA Printing Black
AVA Printing White is a colour which has no hue or saturation and is based on values which automatically map it back to the white point of the selected printer profile. It should be used as a substrate in AVA when no background colour is wanted, and can be found in the AVA Colourfile which is installed by default and is included in your Startup Items, meaning it will open when ColourSys is launched.
If you have deleted the AVA Colourfile from your system (Home user > Library > Application Support > AVA > Startup Items) you can make it in Coloursys by adding a new chip to your colour file and naming it AVA Printing White. This automatically creates a colour where the L*a*b* values are constantly updated through the current profile to achieve the white of the paper.
You can also create an AVA Printing Black colour which finds the strongest black colour from your printer calibration target. To do this, add a new chip and name it AVA Printing Black. However, this chip is also included in the AVA Colourfile.
Note: If you are using the AVA Production Colour Management, you should use the substrate from the Tone DB and not AVA Printing White.
How to set a real substrate colour
A spectrophotometer can be used to read in actual substrate samples, whether they are paper, fabric, vinyl or something else.
Use the method in the section ‘Reading in colours with the Xrite i1 Pro 2 and Pro 3 spectrophotometers’ to take sample readings of your various printing materials. Having a reading of your physical substrate to use within AVA is vital to AVA Production Colour Management.
Setting the substrate colour
The substrate is set in the Layers Palette. If you cannot see the substrate colour chip, click on the small grey disclosure triangle and it will be displayed as per the snapshot below. Double clicking on the colour will bring your active colour file to the front, enabling you to chose a different colour.
Colours can also be chosen from the colour picker by holding down the option key and clicking on the substrate block.
Hierarchical Settings in the software facilitate the correct display of designs with the appropriate settings. The Substrate preference ensures that users are viewing designs correctly, with the appropriate substrate. Having the correct substrate set in a design is extremely important as it affects the overall appearance of the design and its colours.
If you are using a substrate which is darker than the colours in your design, the colours will now display correctly in 5.7 onwards. In previous versions of AVA, the colour wouldn't look right if the substrate was dark.
The Substrate View Setting preference allows you to save different substrate displays to the AVA application or to create customised displays. Customised substrate displays will be embedded within the view or document and saved in the AVA file format. The Substrate Settings are located in the Layers window. Click on the grey triangle icon to access the Substrate Settings .
There are four view settings:
Application - the selected settings will be used as default for the application.
Document - when choosing the Document option, the “custom setting” box needs to be activated in order to modify the settings. The chosen settings will only be applied to the relevant file.
Colourway - when choosing the Colourway option, the “custom setting” box needs to be activated in order to modify the settings. The chosen settings will only be applied to the relevant colourway. Different colourways in the same file can have a different substrate colour set by using this option and each combination is saved in the AVA file. Please note, this setting is not recommended for creating different colouring effects in colourways, it is only intended to be a simulation of specified production media.
View - when choosing the View option, the “custom setting” box needs to be activated in order to modify the settings. The chosen settings will only be applied to a specific window such as a Layout object or a Sub window.
Note: When re-opening a document, only one Design Window appears. This means that settings made on sub windows will be lost. When you activate the custom setting box, it makes a copy of the settings currently used and stores them in the selected view settings until further changes are made. To remove a View or Document setting, simply uncheck the custom setting box.