Navigator – Creating Tone Curves
Navigator refers to any color adjustment other than a linearization or press calibration as a Tone Curve. The process starts with the expectation that the plate has been linearized already.
First you will need to launch Navigator itself, and open the Calibration (Dot Gain) Manager.
Next, you will select Tone Curves from the pull down menu in the upper left of the window. For the Color Space, select the color space that will match your separations selection in your page setups (CMYK/Separations or Monochrome). For the purposes of this guide, we will proceed using a CMYK color space.
Now click on New in the lower left corner of this window. This will bring up a new screen.
Now type a new name for your tone curve. We recommend that you add the date to the name so that you will always know when this curve was created.
Here you can set different tonal values for your C, M, Y, or K inks. If you will ever use spot color/Pantone inks, I suggest adding a 5th color. Under the option for Channel, you will see a button marked Add.
Once you click on that, it will add a spot color channel. This will let you can enter values for any ink other than CMYK. Click on OK to add the channel.
When you return to the main window, it will by default show the “other color” values. Select the channel you want to alter from the pulldown menu, and start editing the values. Start entering data values for the patches and possibly use Smooth to soften the curve.
Navigator tone curves behave in the opposite sense to press calibration curves. This normally means that you enter higher values where you wish to see more output. For example, assuming a positive-reading system where 0% is no output and 100% is full density or coverage, enter values higher than the nominal values of the patches to produce more output for a given input.
Once you have all of your values set for all of your colors, click OK to close this window. This will return you to the Calibration (Dot Gain) Window. Click OK to close the Calibration (Dot Gain) Window.
Open your Page Setup Manager, and select the page setup you would like to apply the Tone Curve, then click Edit. You apply tone curve calibration sets using the Tone Curves drop-down list, just below the calibration options.
Select the Tone curve applicable to this page setup, and click on OK to close the page setup. You are ready to start sending jobs with this new curve.