My goal was to replicate an inkjet print using the PG Digital to perform the CMY colour separations, printed using the PG-11 model.

You have probably already worked out what I did wrong, it was a simple and easy mistake (when you don’t read Japanese), with an ‘interesting’ outcome.

Pictured right is what the picture should have look like - this was the original artwork.

How I got to this stage:

1. I took a digital picture from the roof of my house and loaded this into the computer.

2. The image was resized, reduced to 300dpi and converted from RGB colours to CMYK.

3. The image was printed onto photo-paper using an Epson Stylus Colour 1160 A3 ink jet printer - this became my artwork.

4. The colour print was loaded into the Artwork Holder for the RISO PG Digital machine and scanned 3 times onto 3 separate PG Digital Screens - creating the CMY colour conversions.

5. Each screen was inked and printed in the PRINT GOCCO PG-11

After the 2nd print I noticed the ink coverage was VERY heavy and the design was not working. After the final Yellow print I knew something had gone horribly wrong.

Despite running through everything again and again, I studied the Japanese manual (well looked at the sketchy pictures) for over 1hr and I couldn’t work out what went wrong - so I sent a copy of the print, the artwork and the inked screens to Japan.

I had used the PG Digital before and the prints worked fine, I thought surely an ink jet print could not have this effect on the colour recognition in the machine?

The problem:

I pressed the right buttons to turn the machine on and scan the artwork, I did put the screens in the right way, BUT I imaged/ printed the CMY colours in the wrong order! Hey, I’m male we do these things.

A simple mistake when you don’t read the Japanese labels on the Master which actually do have boxes to mark CMY :-)