RGB vs CYMK profiles in EFI eXpress?

[John Magyar]

First: I am not particularly knowledgeable about proofing etc. I only do landscape photography and I got EFI eXpress bundled with a 3880 printer just to be able to print panoramas longer than Epson's 38 inch limit.

However, I regularly use a color managed workflow when using Epson's supplied drivers. In that case I turn off color management in the driver, and my editing program (PictureWindowPro) sends the image with an RGB profile for my paper directly to the Epson driver (Is this embedded or just additional to image data?).

Using EFI eXpress I tried to add supplier provided profiles for my papers, but they wont work, they must be CYMK, not RGB, profiles. I don't fully understand this, I can only guess how it works and what the difference is. Apparently the profiles are applied at different points in the workflow for the two cases. A search on the internet was no help.

My questions are: Where do I get CYMK profiles, can RGB ones be converted, if so how? How do the two workflow modes work? Please help.

Thanks

[p_vassilis]

RIP software use CMYK profiles for printing, unlike printer drivers which use RGB. EFI eXpress supports RGB profiles for printing, allowing the users to print the same way they do when using the driver. In the menus there is the option "RGB profile connector" which allows you to link a paper type with a profile. You should choose the paper type you choose in the driver and link it to the RGB profile you use. Then you will be able to use it in eXpress. In the menus you can also find the Update tool where you choose what you want to update, the software or the profiles. If you choose the profiles you will be able to download new paper profiles (these are CMYK profiles).

Hope it helps