This is a powerful function which will separate a design through a selected number of profiles, be it CMYK or N-channel, and display the differences between the resulting separations in terms of delta-E and costing.
A rating for each separation is displayed to help you to quickly see which profile will produce the most accurate results. The lower the rating, the lower the delta-E differences are between the original artwork and the separation.
Note: When you are using this feature, you cannot zoom in or out of the preview window. Therefore, make sure you have set the zoom level of your design before opening the Profile Selector Window.
There are three previews to choose from:
- Original image - displays the original artwork
- Separation - displays the separations obtained from each profile
- Delta-E - displays a tonal representation of the delta-E differences. When a dark tone is displayed, it indicates the area which is the most affected. Use the slider to display maximum Delta-E.
Evaluating a set of profiles to separate through
- Open the image you want to separate.
- Go to Separate Menu > Profile Selector…
- Select the location of the folder containing the profiles you want to separate through and click OK.
AVA will start processing the information and will go through each profile in order to give its individual rating. Depending on the number of profiles in the folder, it may take a while to process the information.
The profiles which were contained within the folder you selected are listed down the left hand side of the window, along side their individual statistics. Those with the lowest Maximum and Average delta-E readings are the profiles which will produce the most accurate separation of your design, and these profiles will have the lowest rating. However, that does not mean these will be the cheapest to produce. The above example indicates that the profile named JapanColour2003 has the lowest overall rating and is therefore the most accurate, but it’s also the most expensive to produce. How to set the ink costing can be found at the bottom of this article.
At this stage, you could take a snapshot of this window for later reference.
- Click OK to finalise the individual separations and they will be added to your existing design. Each image will be named with the chosen profile name.
To produce a printed proof of all the separations, open the Layout Window (⌘Y) and make all the images visible. Choose Colourway Menu > Tile with “Visible Layers“ selected in the drop down menu. This will lay out all the images as individual colourway objects to help compare the results visually.
Tip: Apply the %%LayerName Dynamic Text to the original colourway object prior to tiling the images on the page. This will tag each image with the name of the profile it was separated through.
Setting the ink costings
If you know the cost of your inks per litre, you can enter this information in the Ink Costs Settings .
- Go to AVA Menu > Settings > Ink Costs. The following window will open.
Note: The default ink can be renamed by double clicking it.
- Click the + button in the bottom left hand corner of the window to add a new ink to the window.
- Name the new ink.
- Enter a cost per litre.
- Enter a relevant currency symbol and ink coverage amount per litre at the bottom of the window. In the example below, the ink costings are based on 100% ink coverage per square metre.
