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Author Topic: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800  (Read 5586 times)

flappinfish

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Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« on: August 27, 2016, 11:38:51 pm »

Hi,

I'd like to preface this with saying that I'm not terribly familiar with consumer inject printers. Im a photoshop artist lucky enough to have a calibration guy to bug when monitor/printer issues arise. But I'm helping a friend out to make some prints for a show on his new Surecolor P800 and our calibration attempts are failing dismally for images that fall in the mid-tone to 3/4 tone and darker range. Saturated midtone dominant images look acceptable to me, but below mid-tone and moving into 3/4 tone look way off (screen bright-print dark) (screen saturated, prints losing almost all color) looks blocked up with little tonal dimension.

Hardware: 2016 Imac 27" El Capitan - PSD CC 2016
Calibrator: Spyder5 -gamma 2.2- lum = 120 - D65
Epson P800- photoshop manages color, epson luster paper ICC's

I used to print to wide format epsons and Iris printers and never saw such huge discrepancies in these tone ranges.

Is the Imac display just too sharp and saturated to accurately soft proof on?

Thanks in Advance!

 
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Benny Profane

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2016, 01:10:42 am »

Hi,

I'd like to preface this with saying that I'm not terribly familiar with consumer inject printers. Im a photoshop artist lucky enough to have a calibration guy to bug when monitor/printer issues arise. But I'm helping a friend out to make some prints for a show on his new Surecolor P800 and our calibration attempts are failing dismally for images that fall in the mid-tone to 3/4 tone and darker range. Saturated midtone dominant images look acceptable to me, but below mid-tone and moving into 3/4 tone look way off (screen bright-print dark) (screen saturated, prints losing almost all color) looks blocked up with little tonal dimension.

Hardware: 2016 Imac 27" El Capitan - PSD CC 2016
Calibrator: Spyder5 -gamma 2.2- lum = 120 - D65
Epson P800- photoshop manages color, epson luster paper ICC's

I used to print to wide format epsons and Iris printers and never saw such huge discrepancies in these tone ranges.

Is the Imac display just too sharp and saturated to accurately soft proof on?

Thanks in Advance!

Yes, pretty much. You need a more serious monitor, either an Eizo or NEC.
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howardm

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2016, 09:14:35 am »

I would disagree w/ that (at least as a primary factor). 

You coould try using different software, like dispcal/argyll or different hardware, like an i1Display Pro or Munki Display first.  The Spyder's do *not* have a great reputation.

Also, make sure you set the software to use or at least attempt to use the right monitor backlight (CCFL vs. any number of LED variations)

PeterAit

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2016, 10:14:04 am »

Double profiling?
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JRSmit

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2016, 10:24:12 am »

Under what lighting do you examineren your prints? A monitor luminance setting of 120 would mean some serious lighting of your print to match.
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flappinfish

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2016, 01:40:46 pm »

thanks everyone for your input. I was afraid that the imac monitor was probably the culprit.

True our print viewing is poor, no GTI box just a sunny bedroom, yet I was still surprised by our lack of shadow detail compared to the numbers on screen (RGB 30-60 range) looks blocked

It sounds like though no one is calling the P800 poor in the shadow details...?  I dont have the printed calibration target in front of me but I'm going to review it again because I thought my greyscale ramp looked blocked up in the shadows.

I think today we will start with dropping monitor luminance down to about 80 and recalibrating and see how it goes
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graeme

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #6 on: August 28, 2016, 02:19:18 pm »

I use a retina iMac & am pretty pleased with the print to screen match I get. I'm sure an Adobe RGB display would be better but I'm surprised that the print to screen match you're getting is 'dismal'.

Are the paper profiles that you're using good?
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digitaldog

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #7 on: August 28, 2016, 02:53:29 pm »

thanks everyone for your input. I was afraid that the imac monitor was probably the culprit.
Probably not. The calibration of the display, probably.

Why are my prints too dark?
A video update to a written piece on subject from 2013
In this 24 minute video, I'll cover:
Are your prints really too dark?
Display calibration and WYSIWYG
Proper print viewing conditions
Trouble shooting to get a match
Avoiding kludges that don't solve the problem


High resolution: http://digitaldog.net/files/Why_are_my_prints_too_dark.mp4
Low resolution: https://youtu.be/iS6sjZmxjY4
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N80

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #8 on: August 28, 2016, 03:54:36 pm »

No expert here. Novice printer in fact. But, in my short experience with my new iMac I don't see any reason to suspect that it is the de facto culprit here. I'm making prints that I'm perfectly happy with using mine. No reason to expect that the printer is the de facto culprit either.

And it sounds like from what you are seeing this is not just an issue of your print viewing environment either.

So it seems you need to look at your calibration hardware and/or technique. I know that in these forums the Spyder is not a favorite. I'm not qualified to render an opinion there. But, I do seem to recall that a number of calibration systems are not designed to work with monitors like the 5K Retina. I don't know why. But, you may want to check the specs on the Spyder and see what the manufacturer says about using it with this display. I know that X-Rite claims that their latest hardware is capable of calibrating an iMac Retina.
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digitaldog

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2016, 04:21:05 pm »

But, in my short experience with my new iMac I don't see any reason to suspect that it is the de facto culprit here.
It's not. Is it best in class? No. Can you pay more and get a better reference display system with more control over calibration? Yes. Can one calibrate the iMac and get a good print to display match? Sure.
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Farmer

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #10 on: August 28, 2016, 06:18:19 pm »

The P800 is a bit more than just a consumer printer.  It replaced the Pro 3880, and it's part of the Pro lineup, using the same inkset, LUT, etc.
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Phil Brown

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #11 on: August 29, 2016, 08:46:35 pm »

Thanks everyone for further input. As I have spent two more days printing and testing I've come to find the following.

- I recalibrated the monitor with a 80 luminance setting. the rest the same as stated above. This helped some
- pretty much off the bat adding +20 saturation in all colors (hue sat,master,color mode) seems to get me closer (though makes my screen go hyper)
- Images with primarily midtone values (based on Histogram) print within a range that i find acceptable.

- Images with more 3/4 tone values (RGB aprox 20-60) are not even close. Within that value range I have to push a lot more information into the image via photoshop then what I'm seeing on screen.  I'm not relying on the monitor barely at all, just figuring below RGB 60 that I have to open it up (alot more then what I see on screen)

I will admit that not having a GTI light box on hand or comparable viewing light is a major hindrance since I dont have a consistent viewing station and without that I'm not being fair to the printer or to the experts on this forum. I'm personally not a fan of Apple displays except as beautiful palette monitors, but its not my system. Would love to hook up my calibrated NEC as a test, but we dont have the time right now.

Thanks everyone for your help, its much appreciated!
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graeme

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2016, 04:30:05 am »

Thanks everyone for further input. As I have spent two more days printing and testing I've come to find the following.

- I recalibrated the monitor with a 80 luminance setting. the rest the same as stated above. This helped some
- pretty much off the bat adding +20 saturation in all colors (hue sat,master,color mode) seems to get me closer (though makes my screen go hyper)
- Images with primarily midtone values (based on Histogram) print within a range that i find acceptable.

- Images with more 3/4 tone values (RGB aprox 20-60) are not even close. Within that value range I have to push a lot more information into the image via photoshop then what I'm seeing on screen.  I'm not relying on the monitor barely at all, just figuring below RGB 60 that I have to open it up (alot more then what I see on screen)

I will admit that not having a GTI light box on hand or comparable viewing light is a major hindrance since I dont have a consistent viewing station and without that I'm not being fair to the printer or to the experts on this forum. I'm personally not a fan of Apple displays except as beautiful palette monitors, but its not my system. Would love to hook up my calibrated NEC as a test, but we dont have the time right now.

Thanks everyone for your help, its much appreciated!

A wild guess: Are your PS colour settings OK? I recently accidentally clicked on my colour settings in the Edit menu & found that the working colour space was set to sRGB which I certainly didn't select ( I always use Prophoto ). I can only guess that the last CC update reset the colour settings. But I'd be surprised if this discrepancy was causing the issues you're seeing.

Also, have you you got the latest PS CC update installed - there were printing issues with the previous version.
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Royce Howland

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #13 on: August 30, 2016, 09:05:09 am »

On initial reading this doesn't sound to me like a mismatch between the monitor and printer calibration, although there may be some minor misfit there. Allowing for the fact that qualitative statements can be subjective :), having to increase saturation +20 or a description like "images with more 3/4 tone values (RGB aprox 20-60) are not even close" sounds more like something fundamental in the printing pipeline is mis-configured or broken.

If the monitor profile is posted here, some of us could take a look at it and rule out any significant issues with how it's rendering display output. I have to say I'm not a fan of the Spyder products, having tested many previous iterations of them and found them lacking. But I haven't had my hands on a Spyder5 or Spyder5-generated monitor profiles yet. As a side note I also haven't yet looked at any of Epson's canned profiles for the new SureColor printers, but I presume they are competently produced. If this print testing is being done with Epson's luster resin-coated paper, with the associated ICC profile and luster media type selected in the driver, then that should be a pretty bullet proof option in terms of reasonable screen-to-print matching.

So yeah, it seems more likely to me that it's something off kilter in the print pipeline. Wrong printer driver installed on the Mac? Photoshop print settings or Epson print driver settings not fully correct? I don't think double-profiling is possible on Mac OS X any longer; if "Photoshop manages color" is selected then the printer driver colour management is automatically disabled and in fact can't be enabled by mistake.

Photoshop/Mac printing bug? As mentioned by the previous poster, be sure the latest Photoshop CC is installed to correct the printing issue recently triggered by Adobe.

digitaldog

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #14 on: August 30, 2016, 10:02:49 am »

I have to say I'm not a fan of the Spyder products, having tested many previous iterations of them and found them lacking. But I haven't had my hands on a Spyder5 or Spyder5-generated monitor profiles yet.

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=103094.msg845726#msg845726
The higher the reported dE, the worse the unit preformed. So you'll see two Spyder's (newest models) were 9.9 and 7.2 which is pretty awful. The X-rite products were 1.4 and as low as 0.8!
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John Caldwell

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Re: Dismal calibration between imac and Epson P800
« Reply #15 on: August 31, 2016, 06:44:11 am »

Disagree that iMac screen can't match print output extremely well. Suspect unintended use of double profile, given your screen cal settings, which appear good. But something is wrong clerically - it's not that the iMac display won't calibrate with good accuracy.

John Caldwell
« Last Edit: August 31, 2016, 09:23:58 am by John Caldwell »
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