Overview
The Ring Arounds color editing tool helps printing technicians adjust spot colors by printing reference patches with controlled color variations.
Terminology
Spot Color: The original color to be edited.
Ring Arounds: The process of printing reference patches with variations in cyan and magenta to achieve the desired ink mix.
Accessing Ring Arounds Tool
Open a job that contains spot colors in Job Editor. Spot Variations Chart is available from the Edit menu, or by right-clicking the required spot color.
Select the required spot color and click Spot Variations Chart.
Select the spot colors to include, choose the patch size, then select up to three colorants and the up/down step range for each colorant. A preview of the first page is displayed using the selected variations. Click Print to send the generated PDF to the SPC Waiting Queue.
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Patch size: large, medium, or small.
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Step: a decimal value between 0.1% and 10.0% representing the variation for each step.
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Up: an integer between 0 and 2 representing the total steps above the current value.
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Down: an integer between 0 and 2 representing the total steps below the current value.
Click Close to close the window, then check the generated PDF in the SPC Waiting Queue.
The maximum number of patches is 256. If this limit is exceeded, no preview is shown, the Print button is disabled, and an error message is displayed:
If this happens, users can adjust the settings to reduce the number of patches to remove the error.