Inèdit Software

Affects Version/s: Only available from nS Delta 10.0.X.

When we start Calibration Wizard and we set up the inks, we can configure different White Inks on Custom Inks Setup, by selecting this ink on the right printing head and clicking on the White button on the right, which will open the Settings menu.

The options we can use for white inks are:

• Off (use as a spot color) No automatic white channel will be generated, it has to be defined as a Special Color and assigned to a specific name (f.e., we'll change 'White' for a CMYKW [0, 0, 0, 0, 100] value). 
• Flat (formerly Dark and Colored Media in nS9) covers all the opaque parts of the image in white ink. If the image has a transparent background, the program will detect it. Supported: PSD, TIF, and PNG files. Not supported: JPG and PDF. 
• Black Media can be used when printing on a black substrate since it detects all the colors that use black ink and uses its own substrate as black ink instead. Similarly to the previous mode, if the image has a transparent background it will detect it. similar to the previous option, but it also detects the regions with black ink and won't print a white layer underneath to improve both consumption and result.
• Dark and Colored Media (new) will be re-purposed in the future. 
• Highlight White is used with a secondary white ink channel to improve parts of the image with only white. This can be set automatically on Amplitude (the default value is 20%). 

WHITE INK - FLAT

For every part of the image that has the background, we have a white layer.

WHITE INK - BLACK MEDIA

Every part of the image that has a background, we have a white layer, except for regions with black ink.

Other options on the menu:

• Intensity defines the quantity of white ink we will use, by default, it is set up at 100%.
• Choke options reduce the amount of ink around the edges of the printed color, which currently only works on the Print Server.
  • Smooth TBC.
  • Round TBC.

Calibrating a DTG printer

The process of calibrating a DTG printer is similar to a default calibration but has several key differences. To properly calibrate the material and the white ink, we have to use black fabric, and we have to prepare the fabric with the specifications the printer maker requires.

• We start a Calibration and on Color Mode we select a 5-color or 6-color print, depending on if we want different properties on the second layer of white ink.
• We open Custom Ink Setup (three-point icon on Color Mode) and we set White ink as Black media so we can linearize this ink.
• We set Total Ink Limit (Step 1) and Ink Cuts (Step 2) normally. 
• Usually, Re-Linearization (Step 3) is unneeded, so we can skip it.
• In Black Generation, we will use GCR where we will find two different presets:
  • DTG-HQ will have high usage on the white ink mask (reduces dithering)
  • DTG-Eco will have a lower usage on the white ink mask (reduces consumption)
• We'll use a Medium sized target, RGB 180x3 T-SHIRT, which is developed specifically for DTG. Since it has already 3 copies of each sample embedded, we only need to read it once.
• This calibration only works with black T-shirts, so we have to create a new one for other colored substrates. We can just duplicate this calibration and re-use the linearization.
• On Custom Ink Setup we set White ink as Flat.
• We use the same data for Total Ink Limit (Step 1) and Ink Cuts (Step 2) and skip Re-Linearization (Step 3) again.
• On Black Generation, we'll set it as Black Only or GCR and print the black chart (BlackAdd_DTG) to see and select the desired black. Input the CMYK values from the black selected in the Rich Black field.
• We print and measure the RGB 180x3 T-SHIRT, and we finish the calibration.
• Depending on our workflow, we can create additional calibration/s with different settings on Custom Ink Setup:
  • Off if we only want to work with white as a direct ink substitution.
  • Copy from the extra channel if we want to use an alpha channel as white ink (first alpha for first white ink, second alpha for second ink, etc.)