HP Z3100 Problems with Colour Gamut

[Christopher]

I don't have much time but I want to say following. No RIP used with either printer. Inly normal Windows driver. Same Paper and good settings. I check them and there are not to many options in the driveres.

I KNOW that it is possible to print for 1 or two weeks without seeing the problem at all. ( This happened to me.) Because normally I don't check gamut and everything when the prints look great. But these prints were blue, yellow, a lot of snow and some green.

I am also shocked by the fact that the canned profiles from HP, are even worse. I mean really they are a big OH... They have far less Gamut than the R2400.

Now I know the whole thing is kind of strange. HP spending so much time and money on the Z series and than such a result ... I mean in Germany I had to pay 7000 EUR for that thing and for that kind of money I really think of something diffrent.

My Printer is from HP Germany and shipped to the UK.

I mean IS  there someone with who can claim, that his z3100 gamut is OK ? I mean at least as big as the Epsons ?


EDIT: I just got two emails back from two diffrent RIP Companies. Both state that they have found that the colours are really strange with the normal mixing. But also said that they are finishing up the colour mixing and getting some really nice results so far.

So this tells me that it is just a mixing thing and not a problem with the inks.

Christopher

[Christopher]

No once again, yes the printer performce better on Glossy, but I still wouldn't call that really good. Sorry, but even on Glossy the Epson outperformce him. Yes I have done the same test as for HM Photo Rag on Glossy media. Yes it is a LOT better, but still not perfect. I don't have time now to post screens and charts, but pherhaps later.

Christopher

[neil snape]

It is not my experience to see anything less than some excellent printing in all areas other than colour printing of rich , dark print on matte.
There are whole regions in most areas of the L50 on upwards that largey exceed any Epson current printer.
The better profiles are with APS or an external profiler as I said before.
The glossy gamut on the Z3100 is quit a jump on past 8 colour inksets and comparable to the Canon 12 colour. While the dark shadow gamut of the K3 inks is larger than either Canon or HP it is certainly not in most all regions three quarter tone and upwards.

[Panascape]

I think the problem that we are seeing is a colour mixing issue. I hope the following will clarify this statement.

My background is commercial printing and repro, specialising on workflows and harlequin RIP’s. I am one of the founders of Hamillroad Software and along with my partner, Andy Cave who was the father of the Harlequin RIP, was a chief driving force behind the design of FirstPROOF which is a powerful virtual dot proofing system for softproofing rasterized data from RIP’s.

This background lead me to look at the problem from a very different angle to most as I wasn’t interested in comparing profiles, I wanted to see pure colours.

What most of the inkjet manufacturers seem to have lost site of is that their devices are based on a CMYK colour architecture. To me this means that the devices must be able to equal or exceed the gamut of an analogue cromalin.

The preliminary testing for this is very easy, print an unprofiled CMYK RGB ramp and make sure that the density of all the colours exceeds a cromalin of the same ramp. If the density of the colours is correct the ICC profiling process should be able to produce a profile with a good gamut, desaturating and mixing colours where needed.

The profile will not be able to create saturation where it does not exist. This is the first place that the HP failed miserably.

While the pure CMYK from the Hp looks really good, the reds had nowhere near enough saturation, the blue was completely the wrong hue and the greens were the wrong hue and did not have enough saturation. For me at a glance this says a cromalin will exceed the gamut of the HP which physical testing proved to be correct. This is not an acceptable situation.

The same process was repeated with an Epson 4000 which was vastly better.

The next step was to look at the raw inks by doing a diagnostic print. Based on the colours coming from each head, the situation we see above is as a result of colour mixing in the printer. The M and Y inks are sufficiently saturated enough that we should be able to get a far better red than we are seeing.

The LC ink is not as saturated as I would like it to be but still we should be able to get a half descent blue and green. If we look at the remaining three colours it is easy to see how these colours are being mixed in with the CMYK.

Mixing these inks in the way HP seems to be doing it is just asking for trouble as these are colour enhancers and should not play a major role for most of the CMYK gamut but should be used correctly to enhance out of gamut colours.

If they are mixed in all the time, we see exactly what we are seeing now, orange reds, purple blues and grass greens. Profiling from this point is never going to produce the result we want as the pure colours are not sufficiently saturated enough for the profiling process to be able to create an optimum result.

My findings and days worth of testing including the results from about two rolls of prints and almost 1.4l of ink , have been sent to HP South Africa and forwarded to Spain but as mentioned previously, Spain has todate chosen not to contact me or give any useful feedback.

[Christopher]

It is not my experience to see anything less than some excellent printing in all areas other than colour printing of rich , dark print on matte.
There are whole regions in most areas of the L50 on upwards that largey exceed any Epson current printer.
The better profiles are with APS or an external profiler as I said before.
The glossy gamut on the Z3100 is quit a jump on past 8 colour inksets and comparable to the Canon 12 colour. While the dark shadow gamut of the K3 inks is larger than either Canon or HP it is certainly not in most all regions three quarter tone and upwards.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100928\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Sorry, but I don't care anything about APS. I know that my custom profiles with over 4000 patches better are than any thing you can produce with that stuff. And still the Gamut sucks on especially on Matt.

I also think that the canned profiles are made with care. And once again sorry, but they don't show the huge improment over 8 inks...

Ok same as last time last printer profiles. Didn't HP Claim that their satin Pro is the best performing paper of all, if that's true it would be sad...

Yellow z3100 White R2400

Now does you comment mean, that you really can print the test file (red) I posted now can be printed on your z3100 without any problems ? So that they look like they should. They look ok printed but once compared to an Epson print it's rubish...

As much as I would love that it is only a couple of printes I don't believe it anymore.. Why ? If that would be true why would they two RIP Companies find problems. Now don't come with they want to sell their programm. Thats also true but they don't have to to it that way.


Christopher

[attachment=1845:attachment]
[attachment=1846:attachment]

[Mark D Segal]

It is not my experience to see anything less than some excellent printing in all areas other than colour printing of rich , dark print on matte.
There are whole regions in most areas of the L50 on upwards that largey exceed any Epson current printer.
The better profiles are with APS or an external profiler as I said before.
The glossy gamut on the Z3100 is quit a jump on past 8 colour inksets and comparable to the Canon 12 colour. While the dark shadow gamut of the K3 inks is larger than either Canon or HP it is certainly not in most all regions three quarter tone and upwards.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100928\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This post - if correct - really disturbs me and would essentially vacate any interest in moving from an Epson 4800. Part of the whole idea of making such a move would be to get richer prints in the dark tones on both matte and non matte media. If the K3 inks have have larger dark shadow gamut and if Epson prints better reds, yellows, oranges etc. I may as well solve the ink switching problem by keeping my 4800 which is an economical production unit for the matte that I use most, and buy a 3800 for non-matte. Anyhow, I may well have a chance to make some comparative test prints between the Z3100 and my 4800 some time next month. So after I see for myself what is going on, I'll decide what to buy, but this discussion thread has been quite a valuable eye opener, regrettably at other members' expense.

[Christopher]

This post - if correct - really disturbs me and would essentially vacate any interest in moving from an Epson 4800. Part of the whole idea of making such a move would be to get richer prints in the dark tones on both matte and non matte media. If the K3 inks have have larger dark shadow gamut and if Epson prints better reds, yellows, oranges etc. I may as well solve the ink switching problem by keeping my 4800 which is an economical production unit for the matte that I use most, and buy a 3800 for non-matte. Anyhow, I may well have a chance to make some comparative test prints between the Z3100 and my 4800 some time next month. So after I see for myself what is going on, I'll decide what to buy, but this discussion thread has been quite a valuable eye opener, regrettably at other members' expense.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100941\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Not true for yellow. Which is way better on the z3100.

[Panascape]

Mark, apart from the problems with the colour, the lousy media handling (this can be fixed with some bits of plastic and foam) and the position of the LCD the z3100 is a fantastic machine. The B&W printing is way ahead of Epson.

I am confident that HP will get these problems fixed as they have too much riding on this printer.

This part is for any HP employee lurking here, please come clean about this problem with a formal reply on your website or here. Christopher, myself  and some others are doing a lot of testing to help you at considerable expense to ourselves and we have stuck by your product, the least you can do is let all here know what is happening.

[Mark D Segal]

Mark, apart from the problems with the colour, the lousy media handling (this can be fixed with some bits of plastic and foam) and the position of the LCD the z3100 is a fantastic machine. The B&W printing is way ahead of Epson.

I am confident that HP will get these problems fixed as they have too much riding on this printer.

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100943\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I appreciate your optimism and I sincerely hope you are right. Meanwhile I shall await my opportunity to test before buying, and if needful then wait for HP to fix whatever problems they need to fix. I did have a Canon IPF5000 on order when that first appeared but cancelled the order once all the issues arose, and I'm glad a I did because they still haven't addressed much of it. Maybe HP will be more responsive - let us watch for that development as well.

[Kirk Gittings]

The B&W printing is way ahead of Epson

Could you explain this please?

[Panascape]

Kirk the HP prints incredibly neutral B&W prints and so far I have yet to see signs of metamarism. If you print in B&W mode the prints show absolutly no sign of banding, which was a problem with the Epsons. The gloss enhancer also really does work well.

Seems HP have listened to our please for clarity on the problem: HP Firmware release

Update: News letter fron HP says there is new firmware and drivers but the site still has the old firmware and drivers.

[marty m]

(1)  We have no idea if HP is even monitoring this site.  I sent the following message to the various email addresses on the HP site, including presales questions, general comments, and even comments to the CEO.  What I couldn't do is send this message to tech support, because I don't have a valid serial number.  Hopefully one of you who owns the Z3100 could do so.  HP does respond to presales emails.  I doubt that whoever reads my note will bother to forward it to tech support, let alone to the design team in Spain -- but it couldn't hurt to try.

My message:

Senior tech support, and the team that developed the Z3100 in Spain,  need to monitor and respond to the web site and specific threads pasted below that are reporting on serious problems with the Z3100:

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....opic=14652&st=0

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....opic=14327&st=0
 
Luminous Landscape is the most widely read web site in the world for landscape and nature photographers, as well as many others.  The pros on that site are reporting SERIOUS problems with the Z3100.  For every problem that is reported, you can safely assume that hundreds of other anonymous readers of that site won't order the printer based on these reports of problems.  Many others -- like me -- have a backorder for the Z3100 and are considering canceling that order because of these reported problems.  

You need to monitor these threads; respond to the problems that are posted; and solve the problems.  Or lose sales.  Thus far, there is no response from HP on these forums.  

(It also appears that you do not monitor and respond to problems that are posted in your OWN forums.  What is the point of having HP forums if you don't respond to questions and problems that are posted there?)

edit -- hopefully Michael Reichmann will run his own tests in the next week, report on whether he encountered these problems, and either way forward these reports to the design team in Spain -- since he clearly is in contact with them.  After all, Michael is the one who described the Z3100 as "absolutely brilliant."

(2)  Does anyone know if the following response I received from HP is correct?

"Reprinting jobs. You may reprint jobs from the queue by selecting the desired job from the print queue via the front panel. The hard drive is intended to store jobs during printing, and is cleared when power to the printer is turned off. If jobs of different types, for example, PCL3GUI and HP-GL/2, are sent to the printer, all jobs will not appear in the queue. Please send jobs in only one language at a time if you wish them to remain in the queue."

Someone is wrong -- either HP presales or Reichmann in his review.

[Panascape]

Marty, I will test this today and let you all know.

Robert

Update, I cannot find anywhere on the fron panel that will allow me to resend a job...

[andyheb]

(1)  We have no idea if HP is even monitoring this site.  I sent the following message to the various email addresses on the HP site, including presales questions, general comments, and even comments to the CEO.
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....opic=14652&st=0

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....opic=14327&st=0

[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Marty.
Did you read the thread about the problems with the Hahnemuehle Fine Art Pearl completely?
[a href=\"http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14327&st=0]http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....opic=14327&st=0[/url]
I guess not, cause HP did a good job solving the issues there and Mike explained what the problems were and how they solved it.
So why rehash that issue again?

[francofit]

... cause HP did a good job solving the issues there and Mike explained what the problems were and how they solved it....

Just for making it easier for the readers,
 here is the direct link to Mike's conclusions(for the HFA paper problem) of one week ago:

-->  http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....ndpost&p=100066

EDIT: the above link brings you directly there only if you use STANDARD or LINEAR+ mode(buttons on the right top).
If you use OUTLINE mode, pls use this link:
--> http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....t=&#entry100066
..sorry

[neil snape]

Marty, I will test this today and let you all know.

Robert

Update, I cannot find anywhere on the fron panel that will allow me to resend a job...
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=101010\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This has to be done with the upgrade to either PCL or the Postscript option .
I installed both yesterday and it works as described. The interface is different, I'm not sure I should have gone this route as I had everything set up , profiled and calibrated on the other normal driver.
It is a nicer interface with options normally associated with an external software rip but simplified. I'll know more as I use it.

[neil snape]

My message:

 
Luminous Landscape is the most widely read web site in the world for landscape and nature photographers, as well as many others.  The pros on that site are reporting SERIOUS problems with the Z3100.  For every problem that is reported, you can safely assume that hundreds of other anonymous readers of that site won't order the printer based on these reports of problems.  Many others -- like me -- have a backorder for the Z3100 and are considering canceling that order because of these reported problems. 

You need to monitor these threads; respond to the problems that are posted; and solve the problems.  Or lose sales.  Thus far, there is no response from HP on these forums. 



edit -- hopefully Michael Reichmann will run his own tests in the next week, report on whether he encountered these problems, and either way forward these reports to the design team in Spain -- since he clearly is in contact with them.  After all, Michael is the one who described the Z3100 as "absolutely brilliant."

Well if you think that any other brand is perfect then stay there.
Are the issues of gamut on matte are a serious flaw or a a disappointment , or a serious problem? Otherwise serious problems ,  there are not many. Any problems that are coming up that were missed by them and by beta sites are being fixed. Rather silly to think otherwise.

There are so many advantages and features that do make the Z printers brilliant. There are also obvious advantages to both Canon and Epson. Yet to turn a blind eye to just to cry wolf because some of the compromises of any one of the brands doesn't achieve top points is not going to help you find the perfect (nonexistent) printer.

[neil snape]

I appreciate your optimism and I sincerely hope you are right. Meanwhile I shall await my opportunity to test before buying, and if needful then wait for HP to fix whatever problems they need to fix. I did have a Canon IPF5000 on order when that first appeared but cancelled the order once all the issues arose, and I'm glad a I did because they still haven't addressed much of it. Maybe HP will be more responsive - let us watch for that development as well.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100948\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I know they are on all of these issues. Not much of a consulation I realise. I wish updates and fixes, even other solutions would happen quicker from HP to their clients ....
For both Canon and HP at this point printing colour on matte will better on Epson. B&W is good on all three. I have a preference for the HP as it has an extended lightfastness meanwhile maintains contrast range.

[neil snape]

This post - if correct - really disturbs me and would essentially vacate any interest in moving from an Epson 4800. Part of the whole idea of making such a move would be to get richer prints in the dark tones on both matte and non matte media. If the K3 inks have have larger dark shadow gamut and if Epson prints better reds, yellows, oranges etc. I may as well solve the ink switching problem by keeping my 4800 which is an economical production unit for the matte that I use most, and buy a 3800 for non-matte. Anyhow, I may well have a chance to make some comparative test prints between the Z3100 and my 4800 some time next month. So after I see for myself what is going on, I'll decide what to buy, but this discussion thread has been quite a valuable eye opener, regrettably at other members' expense.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100941\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Honest reports help everyone find their happiness.
For the moment if colour printing on matte is your thing then keeping the Epson is a valid choice and or option. On other than matte , dark saturation is the smaller part of the equation when you see the realism gained in greens , yellow and blues that are just not possible on Epson current inksets.
Printing on roll side by side colour and B&W is only possible on HP as images with r=g=b values print without composite in the greys. Quite a few more things already here and to come . Yet if some of the issues are not in your best interests for production printing , you'll be best to await the solution (s) to be offered .

[neil snape]

Sorry, but I don't care anything about APS. I know that my custom profiles with over 4000 patches better are than any thing you can produce with that stuff. And still the Gamut sucks on especially on Matt.

I also think that the canned profiles are made with care. And once again sorry, but they don't show the huge improment over 8 inks...

Ok same as last time last printer profiles. Didn't HP Claim that their satin Pro is the best performing paper of all, if that's true it would be sad...

Yellow z3100 White R2400

Now does you comment mean, that you really can print the test file (red) I posted now can be printed on your z3100 without any problems ? So that they look like they should. They look ok printed but once compared to an Epson print it's rubish...

As much as I would love that it is only a couple of printes I don't believe it anymore.. Why ? If that would be true why would they two RIP Companies find problems. Now don't come with they want to sell their programm. Thats also true but they don't have to to it that way.
Christopher

[attachment=1845:attachment]
[attachment=1846:attachment]
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=100934\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I assume you are talking about matte only then?
Please re-read my post. I said exactly what and where HP is on matte media. I don't need to print out your chart to know the inefficiencies of the current inks and separations on matte.
The gamut extensions on matte are less than stellar. Yet light gamut is in line with other printers, so fine art printing is still possible on many art styles. Don't forget one of the decisions of HP was to go for lightfastness and the compromise of this is gamut extension.
As far as APS goes, or the internal profiler , those are the options that HP offer. APS will make better profiles than the Easy on photo media. That is all I said. The number of patches is another topic that has been covered in many other places.
RIP makers that make their own screens absolutely should try to better the driver separations. I would think they could do better by having different separations per media. But it has been many years since I worked on helping on rip development.