Awagami Profiles

[_BillJackson_]

Can I print successfully with an Epson 9880 on Awagami papers if I use the Awagami profiles for the Epson 9890?  Apparently that’s as far back as the profiles go. I’m scrambling to find a substitute for Epson’s Kozo that just disappeared from the market. Thanks

[Richard Man]

Note that the Awagami makes some nice rice paper / kozo, but they are very different from the Epson Kozo. I purchased the remaining stock from an oversea distributor. If I ever become famous, at least I would have paper to do my prints justice ;-)

[Mark D Segal]

Can I print successfully with an Epson 9880 on Awagami papers if I use the Awagami profiles for the Epson 9890?  Apparently that’s as far back as the profiles go. I’m scrambling to find a substitute for Epson’s Kozo that just disappeared from the market. Thanks

There is no substitute for the Epson Kozo. It was a very unique product with much larger gamut volume than traditional Awagami papers and very thin, hence it could be put to uses not so suitable for the others.

[Richard Man]

My favorite technique is to wetmount the Epson Kozo on traditional rice paper. The print has a luminosity not seen in any other print, IMHO.

[Royce Howland]

To answer the OP's question, it depends on what you mean by "print successfully". In my opinion, no, you won't be able to make accurate prints on a 9880 using 9890 profiles. The two machines have enough differences (including different head designs) that their profiles are not very interchangeable in my experience. If the Awagami papers are ones you'd like to commit to after evaluating them, invest in some custom profiles.

[_BillJackson_]

Thanks for the suggestion of investing in custom profiles.  But what I need first is set of profiles that allow me to roughly evaluate the papers in the Awagami sample pack on my Epson 9880.  The machine works perfectly and it supplies galleries in New York City and the Midwest. The papermakers’ assumption of obsolescence irks me.

[Richard Man]

You can make your own profile if you have access to a flatbed scanner and purchase the needed software. They should be under $200, may be even less. I have a couple. Basically the software prints a color patch, and after it is dried thorough, then scan and it will make a profile. I don't know how it compares to the super expensive custom profile, but the system serves me well and worth the money if you want to play with different paper. They are definitely better than the canned profiles from the paper manufacturers.

[digitaldog]

You can make your own profile if you have access to a flatbed scanner and purchase the needed software.

You can, but every product I've tried, most recently that from LaserSoft made an absolutely awful ICC Printer profile.
http://www.silverfast.com/highlights/printer-calibration/en.html

[Royce Howland]

How rough can your evaluation be? You could always just run printer manages colour with Velvet Fine Art media type, if your main concerns are how the surface looks under ink, what kind of Dmax & saturation you can get under ink load, etc. You could print via the 9890 profiles or something else, but they won't be colour-accurate... so at that point all you can really do is check for coarser grained ink load and paper surface effects anyway.

For what it's worth, I've printed on a bunch of the Awagami papers and have no particular issue with any of them I've used. That includes their Kozo thick & thin, their Unryu, and a couple of others. I never tried the Epson Kozo so I have no reference point there. I have used Asuka's inkjet washi rolls, and also printed on various uncoated kozo papers. So far I like all of the varieties I've tried; but for different reasons, as they have really differing response to ink load. The Awagami papers take maximum ink the best that I've personally seen.

I hear you on the presumption of obsolescence. We still run some 9880's, albeit converted for Piezography carbon printing. They are warhorses that just keep charging along, easily our all-time best bang-for-buck printing platform.

[Richard Man]

You can, but every product I've tried, most recently that from LaserSoft made an absolutely awful ICC Printer profile.
http://www.silverfast.com/highlights/printer-calibration/en.html

Well, I am an authority on color management or anything, but I just checked that, indeed, for the last couple years, I have been making profiles using SilverFast V8.5. I'm 99% surer that I made the Epson Kozo profile using that, and I have made many many prints and to my eyes and all the people who have seen my prints, the colors are pretty dead on.

Of course YMMV, and color experts may see something I don't etc/

[Mark D Segal]

You can, but every product I've tried, most recently that from LaserSoft made an absolutely awful ICC Printer profile.
http://www.silverfast.com/highlights/printer-calibration/en.html

I don't believe, and I'm speculating here, that the kind of scanners most of us use (anything up to and including quality flat-beds such as the Epson V850) are designed (probably the illumination technology) to read printed scanner targets in a manner amenable to making profiles that will help deliver even ball-park accurate printed outcomes. Much as I tried, I was unable to get to the bottom of why such a tempting idea just doesn't seem to work well. But this takes us OT, so if anyone has keen technical insight into this kind of process it could well be worthwhile starting another thread.

[digitaldog]

Scanners are not Spectrophotometers for one. They don’t capture the necessary data and a massive amount of extrapolation (massively more than when we have actual spectral data) is another reason scanners are the wrong tool for the job.