Tips on Using the new Visual Match Scorecard feature in SpotOn Verify 2
We have been experimenting with the new Visual Match Scorecard for a handful of months now, and have some tips on how to use it effectively in a process control program.
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- Tip 1: The most important thing to remember is that this feature’s ability to predict visual matches is tied to the number of patches being measured. The rule of thumb is that more patches are better. We’ve used it quite successfully with the new IDEAlliance ISO 12647-7 Control Wedge 2013, which has 84 patches. I’d hesitate to use it with a control strip that has fewer patches.
- Tip 2: Warm up your i1 Pro 2 instrument by failing a couple of scans prior to actually taking a measurement. This can easily be accomplished by starting a scan and then releasing the button. The scan will fail. Click the Ok button in the warning that pops up and rescan the row. We’ve seen marked improvements in measurement consistency when following this procedure.
- Tip 3:When tracking a printing device to itself or multiple similar printing devices to one printing device, it’s best to create a master reference of the reference printing device to compare to itself over time or to compare other printing devices to the reference printing device. This can be accomplished by calibrating the printing device to a standard reference as closely as possible. Once this is accomplished, select the Make Reference button on the measurement to create the master reference for that printing device.
Bear in mind that this should be done for each substrate type and print mode, as there is no guarantee that changes in substrate or print mode will not affect print quality. At the very least you can test to see what different print modes and substrate will measure as compared to the master reference you created above. - Tip 4: If you notice the worst 10% colors are all very light colors and your score isn’t very good, you might want to create a new Visual Match Tolerance Set in Settings and use the SCCA setting. This will set the Visual Match Scorecard to substrate relative, which will ignore changes in substrate color. This works well if you want to track visual match with prints that have dissimilarly colored substrates but will never be viewed next to each other.
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