This picker works in conjunction with AVA Production Colour Management (PCM) software. It produces a simulation of how the base inks in a digital printer would overprint to produce the chosen colour.
Note: This picker will only appear in your list of pickers if you have AVA Production Colour Management.
Setting up the Custom Overprint Picker
- Overprint Method - select the relevant overprint method
- Tone DB - select the tonal database which accompanies your chosen overprint method
The inks used during the creation of your custom overprint will appear as colour blocks in the picker.
Note: If the channels are not called Channel 1, Channel 2 etc, the colours will not appear in the picker. Some softwares, such as the Custom Overprint software names the channels Channel_01 and therefore you need to use an applications like Text Wrangler to ‘Find’ and ‘Replace All’ the occurrences of _01, _02, _03 and _04 with just space + 1 etc
How to use the Custom Overprint Picker
Once the picker has been set up with the relevant overprint method and tonal database, you can recolour designs.
- Hold ⌥ (option key) and click on you colour chip to open the picker in ColourSys. Each colour will start with its value set to 0.
- Begin adjusting the sliders to create a colour as close to the original as possible. The original colour is shown in the top right hand side of the picker. To its right, the new colour is previewed.
- Once you have started to create the colour, click the ‘Solve’ button in the middle of the window on the right hand side to find the closest colour achievable with your inks.
Note: If you do not begin to mix the colour first, Solve will not work. If the software is unable to solve, or find the colour for you, it will beep when you press the Solve button. You can then continue to mix the colour manually until you get a satisfactory result.
Strengthen or weaken a colour using the Custom Overprint Picker
If you wish to strengthen a colour, adjust all the relevant sliders simultaneously by holding down ⌥ (option key) as you increase one of the colours.
The same method can be applied for weakening a colour. Simply hold down ⌥ (option key) as you move one of the sliders to the left.
Adjusting the amount of black ink used in the Custom Overprint Picker
In some CMYK separations, it is preferable to use CMY to make black instead of using the black ink itself, which can cause unwanted dither in prints.
If you mix a colour which has a lot of black ink in, you can remix the colour to automatically reduce the black levels at the same time as increasing the CMY values by holding down ⇧ (shift key) as you reduce the black slider.
The picture below shows how the software has solved the original colour using the cyan, magenta and yellow inks from a digital printer.
Holding down the ⇧ (shift key) and reducing the level of black used to 0% has automatically increased the levels of cyan, magenta and yellow, resulting in a similar, alternative colour.
You can reset the sliders to 0% at any time using the Zero button (0) at the bottom of the window.