HP Z3100 Problems with Colour Gamut

[EricWHiss]

I am very interested to know what comes of this - and if HP can do anything about it by either changing firmware or even reformulating their inks.  

I have a z3100 on order and bought the little brother the b9180 to use for small sheets.  I found out that it will not print reds well onto matte paper and since its using the same inks minus the extra blacks and gloss I am worried that I'll get nearly the same on the 3100.  

The very worst thing is how the printer handles out of gamut colors. I'm printing a lot of floral images where the OOG red's are coming out orange and the images are there for unusable - red roses with orange spots?. With my old epson 4000, the OOG reds were still red and not really noticable on the prints.

I never thought I would miss that epson 4000!  Sold it and my 7600 last year - rats!

Previously I didn't really worry about out of gamut colors since they didn't show up so much. Maybe someone with more color managment savy can explain what part of the process handles the OOG color? Is it the printer driver or the color profile that deals with this? I always thought it was the profile?   I guess what I am saying is that for my work I don't necessarily care if I get the absolutely correct color, but I sure don't want a rough or weird transition between regions in gamut and those out.  If this can be fixed on the HP by either reworking my profiles or by HP redoing their firmware, maybe not all is lost?

[ricgal]

I too have a 3100 and an Epson 4000-  It is true that deep reds are disappointing,  similar in some way to the first gen epson pigments which struggled in that department-  (I also have an epson 7500 too which i have wrestled with for years).
I believe all is not lost though-  
1.the lightfastness is double at least of the Epsons which is important for giclee on matt paper (and might explain the curtailed gamut)
2.The deep blues and oranges are very strong
3.  metamerism is controlled better than any inkset i have seen
4. gloss dif/bronzing is well controlled with GE
5. B&W is superb
6: its really stingy with ink

As ever it depends on the image you want to print-  Its a shame it is not at present the one stop shop one might have hoped for

It is interesting that we are given a machine with a spectro that can in theory can use any manufacturers paper easily yet more than ever it requires OEM paper to perform at its best.

I hope HP will sort the headstrike issue and the lack of deep red-  we shall see-  perhaps we should all badger them!

[Mark D Segal]

I am very interested to know what comes of this - and if HP can do anything about it by either changing firmware or even reformulating their inks.   

I have a z3100 on order and bought the little brother the b9180 to use for small sheets.  I found out that it will not print reds well onto matte paper and since its using the same inks minus the extra blacks and gloss I am worried that I'll get nearly the same on the 3100. 

The very worst thing is how the printer handles out of gamut colors. I'm printing a lot of floral images where the OOG red's are coming out orange and the images are there for unusable - red roses with orange spots?. With my old epson 4000, the OOG reds were still red and not really noticable on the prints.

I never thought I would miss that epson 4000!  Sold it and my 7600 last year - rats!

Previously I didn't really worry about out of gamut colors since they didn't show up so much. Maybe someone with more color managment savy can explain what part of the process handles the OOG color? Is it the printer driver or the color profile that deals with this? I always thought it was the profile?   I guess what I am saying is that for my work I don't necessarily care if I get the absolutely correct color, but I sure don't want a rough or weird transition between regions in gamut and those out.  If this can be fixed on the HP by either reworking my profiles or by HP redoing their firmware, maybe not all is lost?
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Eric, I'm not sure how nostalgic I would be for an Epson 4000. I had one, now using the 4800, and on both printers OOG red is a big problem. I think there are four issues - maybe you know them and do these things already: (1) the profile and paper choice, (2) the choice of rendering intent (3) the colour working space and (4) how Photoshop renders OOG colours in light of the foregoing. Re (1) - matte has lower D-Max than gloss;  while this primarily matters for shadow detail it can also affect how saturated colour reproduces. Re (2) it is sometimes worthwhile softproofing both RELCOL and Perceptual to see which does less damage; re (3) sometimes using a narrower colour space helps tame the reds so at least some detail is preserved from hyper-saturation that can periodically occur from using a very wide colour space; (4) before you print, make your final colour correction adjustments with Soft Proof active. Add a Selective Color Adjustment Layer, select Red, and tweak Cyan, Yellow and Black till you see something more satisfactory looking for you than what Photoshop did on its own. Then print and see what happens. It should be predictable assuming you are well colour-managed.

[A. Andrew Gonzalez]

It's interesting that the z3100 sample print from HP, the one with the red flowers and water splash, printed on HP Pro Satin, looks beautiful. The reds are not orange and are very deep and rich.
Is this a color calibration problem with the spectrophotometer?
Has anyone tested the Advance Profiling Solution for the color issue?

[EricWHiss]

Eric, I'm not sure how nostalgic I would be for an Epson 4000. I had one, now using the 4800, and on both printers OOG red is a big problem. I think there are four issues - maybe you know them and do these things already: (1) the profile and paper choice, (2) the choice of rendering intent (3) the colour working space and (4) how Photoshop renders OOG colours in light of the foregoing. Re (1) - matte has lower D-Max than gloss;  while this primarily matters for shadow detail it can also affect how saturated colour reproduces. Re (2) it is sometimes worthwhile softproofing both RELCOL and Perceptual to see which does less damage; re (3) sometimes using a narrower colour space helps tame the reds so at least some detail is preserved from hyper-saturation that can periodically occur from using a very wide colour space; (4) before you print, make your final colour correction adjustments with Soft Proof active. Add a Selective Color Adjustment Layer, select Red, and tweak Cyan, Yellow and Black till you see something more satisfactory looking for you than what Photoshop did on its own. Then print and see what happens. It should be predictable assuming you are well colour-managed.
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for the suggestions...I have played with this some but not the color space of the original file which was adobeRGB. Are you suggesting I convert this to sRGB first before printing? Actually I am now using profotoRGB for a lot of my work so that space is very wide and can cause printing problems.  

And you are right about the epson:  When I was using my epson 4000 there was at least one moment a day where I wanted to either take a sledge hammer to it and smash it up or toss it down the stairs and kick it out the door.  I wasted so much ink, paper, and most importantly time trying to get that thing to work. Why epson made the user interface so restrictive I can't say. The sheet feeder tray was worthless and either it wouldn't feed the paper or it would fold up one of the corners on the way through.  What made me the most frustrated is some times it would work, take 3 sheets and then I would leave the room and it would quit.  It made nice prints - when it worked.  It clogged. It came out of adjustment and made bands, it ran low on ink and wouldn't let me clean a clog even when there was enough ink left to make 30 prints.  I hated that thing.

I've spent a little time comparing profiles for the ipf5000, epson 3800, epson 4000, and the hp 3100 and b9180.   I'm just downloading them from paper manufacturer's sites: Crane, Hahnemuhle, Ilford, Inova     I'm then comparing them to each other for each paper type using the colorsync utility on the Mac.   Seems like everytime the canon and epson printers have a bigger color space in the reds and mostly everywhere else too with some exceptions.  I'm surprised!   The older epson inkset for the 4000 and 7600 seems to have really big range in the reds.

[eronald]

Previously I didn't really worry about out of gamut colors since they didn't show up so much. Maybe someone with more color managment savy can explain what part of the process handles the OOG color? Is it the printer driver or the color profile that deals with this? I always thought it was the profile? 
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It's the profile. Contact me at edmundronald at gmail dot com and we can make and test a new profile. I have some new Xrite equipment coming in that needs testing.

Edmund

[Mark D Segal]

It's the profile. Contact me at edmundronald at gmail dot com and we can make and test a new profile. I have some new Xrite equipment coming in that needs testing.

Edmund
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Edmund, while it is good of you to offer help, there could be several causes, including but not limited to the profile.  

Eric, the 4000 from my experience was a very robust, reliable performer except for clogs/ink recession. Likewise for the 4800, which clogs much less than the 4000 did, and both are far better built compared with the casing and paper handling of the 3800.

The reproduction of reds is often a problem because the colour spaces we are using exceed the printers' gamuts. (And I believe in Michael's reviews, if I remember correctly, he found the Epson 4800 somewhat better on red, the Canon better on blue and green, and the HP z3100 very close to the Canon IPF5000.)

Your soft-proofing will tell you whether gamut compression is occuring, and if so things will happen to the reds. What happens depends on the things I mentioned in my previous post. If you are using ARGB98, experiment by making a new copy of the image file, convert to sRGB, print it in your usual way and see what happens. This will help explore at least one possible approach to a solution.

If however you are getting orangey reds out of the printer for shades of red that on the (properly profiled and calibrated) monitor are both redder and in gamut (i.e. minimal difference with soft-proof on or off) this would suggest another kind of problem happening between the image file and the mixing of ink, because the soft-proof is done with the printer profile you are using and gamut compression would not be the culprit. Once you have gone through a process of elimination like this, including perhaps taking up Edmund's offer of a profile, if you have not solved it a call to tech support may be in order.

[EricWHiss]

Edmund,
Thanks for your offer - I'll gladly take you up on it.  

Mark,
I just tried some of your suggestions including the color space change and also the selective color.  The problem is visible in soft proof but just more apparent when you see the print - could be my viewing light in my home office or something else but it just looks worse on paper. My screen is calibrated (Apple Cinema display).  However, it appears that the color managment and printer is working correctly. Now, I'm just hoping that a new profile will help with the transitions from in gamut to OOG otherwise this printer is going on the auction block and I will cancel my z3100 order. I also spoke to HP support today - unfortunately the tech support person who fielded my call did not know what rendering intents were and had to put me on hold for 10 minutes to go find out what they were before suggesting I try printing with HP's automated software solution. She was unaware of anyone else having problems printing deep reds.

btw-It appears from the profiles downloadable from the paper manufacturers that the 3100 gets slightly better gamut than the b9180 -

[Panascape]

HP South Africa has taken this up with the design centre in spain but as of yet no suggestions or official comments.

[Panascape]

Mark

I am seeing the colour perfectly on my screen and softproofing shows exactly what I am going to get on the printer and matches the output very closely.

My epson 4000 beats the z3100 in every single area and the softproofing and prints confirm this. Christopher did a good test whereby he profiles the same paper on and Epson and a z3100 using the same external device and his post above speaks for itself.

After an extreme amount of testing my conclusion is that HP have a problem with the way the printer mixes the ink internally. This is resultin in raw colours that are not suffiecient to produce a profile with a wide enough gamut.

Robert

[eronald]

Eric, could you please post the exact operating system version and Photoshop version you are running ? Thank you.


Edmund

[Christopher]

Ok as promised here are the results. Changes NONE. OK the large custom profiles got a little bit better but still so bad compared to the Epson.

The image show the maximal IN-Gamut Range of the Printer. So Colour got so much tuned until they fir nearly into gamut.. sorry but that's not good. I mean look at these...

Paper used: HM Photo Rag

[attachment=1838:attachment]

[Christopher]

Ok, I wanted to show you one more thing. A Gamut Chart with L = 25; L = 50 and L = 75

I think it shows how really poor the z3100 performce at 25. I mean 50 is not good. 75 is good buzt 25 is a real disaster.

[attachment=1843:attachment]

[Mark D Segal]

Ok, I wanted to show you one more thing. A Gamut Chart with L = 25; L = 50 and L = 75

I think it shows how really poor the z3100 performce at 25. I mean 50 is not good. 75 is good buzt 25 is a real disaster.

[attachment=1843:attachment]
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Christopher,

Thanks ever so much for taking the trouble to do these tests, and fix-up the results so they can be displayed for our "enjoyment". I am sure it is of as much interest to you as it is to those of us thinking of buying one of these printers.

It is very clear from your results in the previous post that not only red, but in fact ANYTHING on the warm side of the spectrum is coming out much less saturated from the Z3100 than from the Epson 2400, and the 2400 would have yet *somewhat* less gamut than the 4800.

I assume from your descriptions that you have custom-profiled both printers in the same way and are using the same paper in each. Can I also assume you are not using any RIPs to drive either printer - you are using the native drivers. Now is it possible that there are other settings on the HP driver or in the way Photoshop is communicating with the HP driver (*Print with Preview* settings) that are messing you up without you knowing about it? That is to say, have you carefully checked that ALL the necessary settings in the HP driver and in Photoshop are correctly configured for the paper and profile you are using? It sounds to me as if you have probably checked all this over and over again, but I ask anyhow *just in case* something may be amiss.

The reason I ask is that it is TRULY hard to believe that a firm as sophisticated as HP, with the HUGE amounts of money they put into developing the Z3100 would release a printer for 5000 dollars that can't out-perform in every respect a low-price, out-of-date Epson 2400. You can imagine they would have taken Epson's and Canon's Professional Printers apart to the core and studied every aspect before they even got into their basic design work, not to speak of the elaborate testing their own engineers and beta testers world-wide would have had to perform to convince HP's marketing people and corporate executives that the machine was ready to be released.

Discussion Forums like this would tend to see more complaints than satisfaction because happy customers just carry on printing usually without posting good news, while the disappointed people are upset therefore motivated to spread the bad news. This is just human nature - watch the news on television every day and you know what I mean. So on that basis I have to assume that while your issues are real in your case, there have to be other people who are completely satisfied, otherwise the volume of complaining would be much louder and we would be hearing even more about it.

The reason I'm saying this is not to make any excuses for HP, because I have no relationship with them whatsoever, but the logic building in my mind is that perhaps the problem you are showing - which is clearly there in the results - is NOT a generic problem with the printer technology, but a software issue or a malfunction of your particular machine. That would suggest a very thorough dialogue between you and your local HP service center, with your output tests, to try to get to the bottom of what is happening.

As I said at the beginning, there should be a great deal of interest in the outcome of all this amongst those like myself who have been seriously considering to buy one of these printers. It is most important for prospective customers to know whether the problem you demonstrate is a generic technological deficiency, or a case-specific issue that has a straightforward solution. So do please follow-up further with HP and keep us posted.

[Panascape]

Mark, I have tested using a 4000 and the Z3100 using windows drivers for both. I have tried evey combination of setting on the HP driver and my results are the same as Christophers. We have even elimineted the drivers from the equation by examining the profiles and these tell the same story.

In this case HP did indeed release a $5000 printer with what appears to be screwed up colour mixing. I have been in touch with HP South Africa but HP Spain seems to be extremly quite with regards to this problem. I am assured however that they are working on it.

[Jim Cole]

Mark,

I agree with your assessment of the situation, that it must be a localized issue to a few machines or to a specific production plant. I have seen prints in person that looked exceptional in every way.

I had ased in an earlier post if any of these gamut defective machines have appeared in the US market, but so far no one outside of South Africa and I think the UK has posted this issue.

Jim

[Panascape]

Jim the canned profiles straight from HP show exactly the same problem as we are experiencing. This says catagorically that it is all machines.

Can't say how I know this but I would expect to see new firmware and new profiles for these machines very soon.

[Jim Cole]

What we do not know, that could be machine specific, are possible problems with the production of the inks or the hardware itself that would show up no matter which profile was used. Am I mistaken in this assumption?

Still trying to maintain optimism here as I have one of these beasts on order.

Jim

[Mark D Segal]

Jim,

I've seen several prints done by a professional photographer here in Toronto from the Z3100 and I was also very impressed with the quality, but I must say that for these images the predominant colors were blues and greens, and some yellow so I haven't personally seen the warm side of the gamut properly exhibited by a non-HP user.

I believe Christopher is writing from Germany or a neighbouring country.

I think it really will be very useful and important for Christopher, Robert (Panascape) and HP to collaborate on getting to the bottom of what is going on and let the broader community know the outcomes. Until then it is hard to pinpoint what is what.

[neil snape]

Complicated issues at hand.
We need to reduce the elements to one stream here.

So the problem is on matte media.
I can't see any problems on glossy or satin on any stock I have ever run through the printer.
Now , the ink set > it is and always has been a CMYK OGV printer for me. I was a bit confused when they labeled it RGB added primaries but on a print out like a calibration chart it's quick to see it's OGV. It's a very good choice too.
The Canon red ink tank colour is a fair bit better at producing saturated mid tone or even high L reds on all photo papers. These reds should be higher in C than the Epson K3 inks too. The HP still out does K3 on reds with photo media in the same or similar regions as the Canon.

So why didn't the reviewers or beta testers ( I am) see this?
Well some did.
Why wasn't it written up on the billboards?
Good question.
Reviewers who had the early models had varying amounts of knowledge on how to make the best of what they had in way of media, firmware and software. A fact: each early unit had different firmware and media set ups. As they came online, firmware and software changes AND media were seeded during the tester's access to the printers.
Similar things were going on for beta sites.
Early on the reds were actually fairly rich, but the transitions were harsh. Lacking in detail, the separations were changed more than once.
Then question of software. The software didn't always correspond to the latest updates in media set ups, nor separations.
Tracking these changes was a long and painful experience that most of the reviewers didn't have to go through.
Those who did reported ( some did anyway) and changes were quickly made. Each time changes were made the series of changes do not necessarily get out to users/reviewers.
Each time a change was made it affected not only the area trying to be fixed but also took away from other areas. It was a push pull thing that is still moving around.
What I see is great advances in photo media but alas flat matte media printing.
How does software play into this?
Well the built in profiler for some strange reason builds the best matte media profiles. Better than the APS, better than Profile Maker. On top of that printing in relative is better for reds than perceptual. Yet this has to be done with a media set up that I'm not sure is even in your printers yet.
APS works very well for all photo media but is just not as good at matte, yet I do not have the latest build of APS.
Another point> the soft proofing on matte is not very good. There are some serious problems there , hopefully they have been fixed. The best soft proofing will still be the built in profiles vs external.
I looked long and hard at soft proofing on Hahnemuhle FA media on K3, UC, and Claria ? Canon inks.
Strange that I also see Canon having problems in saturation in shadows on matte media.
Could it be pigment loads for thermal heads are not as well suited to matte media?
Then it brings me back to the problem and where it may have been overlooked.
I recently printed a series of artworks for a photorealistic painter. Rich reds, he was having his concerns with from his shop printer (Epson 7800 I think).
His proofs were on glossy and his prints were on Hahnemuhle. Even though the Epson is excellent at reds, it's not realistic to try to proof on glossy then try to repro on matte.
So I printed on Satin and matte on the Z. I have the proofs and prints from the Epson. The glossy are unrealistic and not near as accurate as Canon or HP will do on glossy. But , who cares the client is king. Now the matte media. The Z is flat, lackluster. The Epson is looking good compared to the soft proof of the H 308 on an iP5000, and the fresh Z print with the latest of everything.
I send the prints to the artist. He then says well after all this time wanting to print matte ( he was told that galleries prefer  matte !!! ) he is thrilled with the satin repro .
So even though I had printed many rolls of matte, I hardly did much colour printing. B&W with printer management on the Z and matte is absolutely beautiful, I don't think I looked at colour enough, or that is until this artist asked me to try to help.

What can be done for matte clr repro?
New separations will help. Specific modifications to the APS, and Easy profilers.
For now that's is the quickest and most accessible fix.
Things like a different red are a possibility but when , where , how , is beyond the scope of any reviewer or beta tester.

So I hope this helps at least a little.