成仙之路

Yay! I've got the problem solved.

Although I've purchased a brand new set of ink, I didn't want to replace all ink cartridges in the machine with new ones yet. It would be waste of money if it didn't make any difference.

While googling for solutions of my printing issue, I found a website quite useful for ones who are new to color management. It provides comprehensive, detailed information, as well as useful links, and test files for free to download.

[caption id="attachment_197" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="This is what it looks like from one of the test prints."][/caption]

(The upper left image of bee was supposed to look grayscale, and on right, the color of "Poster Art" should look neutral, not pink.)

Hexachrome is a relatively new print invention, having been created by Pantone in 1994 to improve upon conventional CMYK printing. Any print designer can tell you that combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink can be inadequate when reproducing certain colors, such as fluorescent colors, picture-perfect fleshtones and vibrant blues. The four inks in general are not very pure, and the cyan in particular is a dirty color. Pantone responded by creating a six-channel color model (which is supported by most commercial printers, who often have six-unit presses) that uses purer CMYK inks and adds Hexachrome Green and Hexachrome Orange inks to accommodate shortcomings in those color ranges. The result is an image that is more vibrant and has a color gamut approaching that of the RGB color model, and it is used best in circumstances where vibrant RGB color needs to be preserved in an ink-based printing. Click here for a gallery of brochures and designs printed using Hexachrome technology.

A Hexachrome image in the computer is not much different than a CMYK image. CMYK images have four channels (cyan, magental, yellow and black) while true Hexachrome images have six:

Cyan: 105˚
Magenta: 75˚
Yellow: 90˚