Adding Project Inks to an Existing DotProof Profile

You can add job specific inks to an existing MXD DotProof profile, without additional printing and measuring of test charts.

Using MXD profiles for DotProof, you can use more than four channels. The profile can be optimized in iteration cycles to achieve the highest possible match of proof to print. Job specific spot colors can then be flexibly added after the optimization, thus creating new profile variants. Printing and measuring of test charts after adding the inks is not required. Even when the original MXD profile will be optimized later, those changes will be automatically carried over to the dependent profiles, without any further work from your side.

Usually the main profile contains the color channels that are used for separation, i. e. for the common process colors used in the printing process such as CMYK. You will then create dependent variants with additional spot color channels that are used for specific objects/jobs that might also overprint with other objects, but are not used for image separation.

Using MXD technology, you are not limited to four channels anymore. You could add more channels to the main profile. To have a maximum of flexibility, it is recommended to create an MXD profile with only the basic common colors and then derive a profile variant from it by adding the colors required to proof a specific document. For the next proof job that uses a different color channel set, you will create another profile variant, and so on. Please keep in mind you cannot deactivate channels to create new profile variants; you can only add channels.

  1. Create a DotProof profile in GMG OpenColor or select an existing MXD profile.
  2. Click the Add button next to the profile name to add one or more inks to the profile. You can choose inks from all Spot Colors used in the current project (but not from spot color libraries).

  3. Export the proof profile and use it in GMG ColorProof. As it already contains all spots required for printing the document, you do not need to add further spots from a spot color set (db3).

GMG OpenColor calculated a new dependent profile variant with the additional inks, for example "PANTONE Bright Red C" in the screenshot.

DotProof profile with variant.

The main DotProof profile "Sample Offset Project - ISO Coated v2 (39L) with Pantone V2" has a profile variant "Sample Offset Project - ISO Coated v2 (39L) with Pantone V3" (1) with one additional channel "PANTONE Bright Red C", which is highlighted in the list. You can use the Duplicate button (2) to create an independent copy of the profile variant. You can use the Add button (3) to create further variants from the main profile.

  • Recalculations and optimizations applied to the main profile are automatically applied to all profiles derived from it. (Manual profile corrections are applied only to the edited profile.)
  • You cannot optimize dependent profile variants.
  • You can create a copy of a profile variant and make it independent, including the ability to edit and optimize it independently and to derive new profile variants from it.

See also: