Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Alan Goldhammer on October 09, 2017, 01:16:23 pm
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Mark Segal has an interesting new article on the differences in color output using the Epson Printer Manages Colors and two profiles using Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Luster Paper. The statistical differences with the Gretagmacbeth patch set are significant between the three prints. However, this review would be more interesting had there been an examination also of one of the standard prints that we use to evaluate printer/profile combinations such as the Outback test print. Did Mark do such a comparison?
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In brief - no Mark didn't.
But I referenced a similar test I did conduct in my "Printing Can be Fun and Easy" Article, different printer and paper. It requires making the prints, then scanning them such that what you would see on your display kind of mimics what I see on paper. Extra time involved, and I decided that such a demo wasn't really necessary to the key points I was looking for and wanted to convey in this article. Not to say it wouldn't be useful as a check on the difference between observed colour appearance and statistical outcomes. Who knows - one of these days I may just crank it out, but it's been busy times lately.
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The reason for asking is that the dE values are inconsistent in terms of magnitude among the three sets. I assume that this is because of the software implementations of the two profilers and how the print driver was configured at the factory. We know from the posts of one user that PMC gives him very nice prints using that approach. I've never examined PMC on my Epson 3880 as I learned color management right away when I switched over to digital.
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The reason for asking is that the dE values are inconsistent in terms of magnitude among the three sets. I assume that this is because of the software implementations of the two profilers and how the print driver was configured at the factory. We know from the posts of one user that PMC gives him very nice prints using that approach. I've never examined PMC on my Epson 3880 as I learned color management right away when I switched over to digital.
Of course they're inconsistent and that's not the least bit surprising. Inconsistencies between canned profiles and custom profiles have well known causes - not only software but also profiling and printing hardware. Inconsistencies between PMC and the canned profile are probably explained by other things built-in to the PMC process beyond profiling per se. I agree also based what I have produced that PMC can make "nice" prints, especially viewed in isolation. But are they accurate prints? Another question. The rather high dE outcomes for some of those values would be readily apparent in a stand-alone real world photo, but low ones likely much less so.
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Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Luster Paper profile was built using Epson Japan's own software. It's color engine is unique and not so great, while some of the Epson profiles are built using the X-rite Color Engine with i1Profiler or (for older printers) MonacoProfiler. Both better than what Epson Japan uses.
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Mark,
Thanks for the article. For folk like me, who want to use “best practices,” but who are not as technically capable as the true experts like yourself and Andrew, it is helpful to know that the effort I make to stay current and “state of the art” in my practices is worthwhile.
Rand
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BTW there is a small error at the end of the article. There are three references to PCM instead of PMC. I got confused for a second, thinking it might be another acronym that I missed, but I believe is a typo.
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PMC and PCM mean the same thing and apologies for any misunderstanding this inconsistency may have caused. Those with access to editing the web page intend to fix it, but I see it remains to be implemented.
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Sorry, got tied up on another thing yesterday. Will fix it today.
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Super, thanks Kevin and apologies to you and readers for the confusion - my mix-up.
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Mark,
Once again, thank you for the time/effort/ and intelligence you put into your studies and resultant articles here on Lula. I don't think that anything similar exists. You truly provide a great service to our community.
Brad
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Thank you very much Brad; really appreciated.
Mark