Deeper blacks without color management

[Erland]

Good Day!

When I just for fun measured my Dmax with my profiles (3 different) compared to letting the printer print without Color management, the Dmax is suffering.
without I get a Dmax of around 2.3 and with 2.05. I might even argue that it really is visible when comparing 2 different prints.

I use a i1Pro2 with i1Profiler, printing using RC, since in the soft proof this i giving me a deeper black. Is this a common problem?
I will try modify the node that sets the deepest black in the profile to see if I can get a higher Dmax, anyone with experience with this?

Kind Regards
Marcus

[Wayne Fox]

Modify the patch? Not a good idea.

You might try increasing the ink load on the target and re-profiling.

[Erland]

The thing is I don't have that setting available in my driver. Epson doesn't provide it when using no cm in the driver for the Stylus Phot 1400.
I looked at the profiles, compared it to the canned Epson drivers for the lustre paper, and my blackest black is about 3 shades lighter. if I create an sRGB document in PS, and convert 0,0,0 RGB to my profile I get around 25,14,0! And the driver only prints deepest black when it receives 0,0,0. So I will modify my profiles, either create deeper black nodes, or just move the darkest node to 0,0,0 instead. Easily achieved in either Efi's Color Profiler or Profile Maker 5, Profile Editor.

[digitaldog]

I'm with Wayne on this suggestion. Try different media settings, or anything in the driver that might alter the behavior.
Odd the canned profile does what you wish. But often I see downsides with very saturated colors having too much black (dark tones) compared to a better custom profile.
You can see this using this test image and examining 'Bills Balls' (the blues with the canned profile to my 3880 are pretty bad):
http://www.digitaldog.net/files/Gamut_Test_File_Flat.tif

[Erland]

I agree that using a different media setting does help, but I use Semi-gloss now, and get this result. If I choose Epson Archival Matt, which has the most ink laid down, I also get a different greyscale-tint when Printing through ACPU. Feels like something fishy is going on, just can't say why.

I use i1 Profiler, 1.5.6, with an i1 Pro 2. I have done a check with i1 Diagnose, and it did all its routines correctly.
I am going to do an Optimization this evening, just letting the ink dry from yesterdays printout. as well as do an edited profile. I know it's not the way to do it, but apart from the blacks, my profiles looks great! Even in black-and-White.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Just a hail mary suggestion but you might try printing a normal step wedge print with 000RGB black on Epson's clear film or any other film that accepts inkjet ink and view said print with a back light of your choice similar to viewing slides on a light table. Choose any profile or better yet try them all to see which gives the most dense black.

I did this experiment way back in '99 with an Epson Photo EX because I was testing whether their film could be used for exposing photo sensitive plates and silk screen frames for commercial presses which requires light blocking blacks.

I can say that even the sun couldn't cut through Epson's black ink which was better than what I got using darkroom chemical process film.

Don't know if Epson ink formulations have changed to where they aren't very dense but this might confirm whether the profiles are actually holding back on ink coverage including black.

[Scott Martin]

if I create an sRGB document in PS, and convert 0,0,0 RGB to my profile I get around 25,14,0!

OK, so it's seeing color in the blacks and trying to compensate for it. Neutralizing the blacks at the expense of DMax is common in i1Profiler and Monaco Profiler before it. ProfileMakerPro didn't do this - it always left the blacks at 0,0,0. I've long asked for a "neutralize blacks" checkbox so that we could choose the behavior.

My findings are similar but I'm liking the results - at least on inkjet processes. Try using Perceptual where you'll get less of this effect.

[digitaldog]

Here's what I see from my own profiles for an Epson 3880 Luster using i1P:

0/0/0 maps to 7/6/22 with RelCol
0/0/0 maps to 2/1/16 with Perceptual.

The output with respect to black and all else looks good to me. 

[Scott Martin]

Here's what I see from my own profiles for an Epson 3880 Luster using i1P:
0/0/0 maps to 7/6/22 with RelCol
0/0/0 maps to 2/1/16 with Perceptual.
The output with respect to black and all else looks good to me. 

Yeah, it's always less with Perceptual but one of the numbers should always be 0 (kind of like color printing filtration on a color enlarger).

[Erland]

My profiles with PM5 has a better black indeed, but the profiles are otherwise inferior to those made in i1Profiler.

So I edited my profile in a 2 step process. First using PM5 Profile Editor to make the darkest node darker. It was l14.2 IIRC and changed I to l1.2.
I then opened that profile in EFIs Color Profiler, and made selective color changes to each RGB value
0.0.0
8.8.8
16.16.16
24.24.24.
All these were earlier clipped to 23.17.0, creating a greyish blob from my shadows and blacks.
It took some trial and error finding the appropriate replacement values.
The result is significantly better, both in terms of contrast and punch in the blacks.