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Author Topic: z3100 Colour Issue  (Read 21463 times)

Jim Cole

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #40 on: June 18, 2007, 04:50:37 pm »

Marc just brought up something that I noticed when printing a lot of images the week before last for a show on my 44" Z3100.

A couple of prints came out wacky...poor pastel transitions in the skies, blue/cyan color shifts on redish subjects like the hoodoos at Bryce canyon. All other prints were fine. Then I had remembered that I had only saved two master files with a ProPhoto colorspace...the ones that had issues. I went back and converted to AdobeRGB for the print file and lo and behold, both prints came out fine.

I haven't tested this further, but I wonder if Sean's issue has something to do with printing directly from ProPhoto colorspace.

Jim
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Jim Cole
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ricgal

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #41 on: June 18, 2007, 07:06:29 pm »

Just to add my two pennys worth I have had a mixed experience with the z3100.  I sympathise with Sean in what sounds to be a very frustrating situation.
On the positive side in the last week i have reproduced an old LightJet print on ID Satin with such accuracy that even seasoned professionals have not been able to tell which print came from which machine.
On the negative an old giclee customer came in and brought me down to earth by asking me to reproduce a painting consisting of deep reds-   nothing too outrageous on first glance,  some quinacridone here,  alizarin there, venetian red and burnt umber.  What followed was a day of frustration in which i did not even manage to come close.  i was printing on old stock Hanhamuhle 230gsm which may have been part of the problem, I used a Pulse to make the profile as i only have A2 sheets which are no good for APS.
May I say though it has always been a predictable nightmare with the soft proof on my Spectraview always matching what pops out.  
When converting on the fly I am printing from Adobe RGB.  When mission critical however I am converting to the destination printer space within PSCS1 and doing any tweaks b4 printing within the space.  It strikes me it is asking a lot more of the Adobe engine to convert from a very wide space like prophoto down to an output space.
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rdonson

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #42 on: June 18, 2007, 08:00:51 pm »

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Then I had remembered that I had only saved two master files with a ProPhoto colorspace...the ones that had issues. I went back and converted to AdobeRGB for the print file and lo and behold, both prints came out fine.

I haven't tested this further, but I wonder if Sean's issue has something to do with printing directly from ProPhoto colorspace.

Jim
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I thought that as well.  When I did my test prints of Sean's images I printed from ProPhoto and did a conversion to AdobeRGB prior to printing.  I saw no difference with my test prints.
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Ron

marclw

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #43 on: June 18, 2007, 09:54:40 pm »

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Marc just brought up something that I noticed when printing a lot of images the week before last for a show on my 44" Z3100.

A couple of prints came out wacky...poor pastel transitions in the skies, blue/cyan color shifts on redish subjects like the hoodoos at Bryce canyon. All other prints were fine. Then I had remembered that I had only saved two master files with a ProPhoto colorspace...the ones that had issues. I went back and converted to AdobeRGB for the print file and lo and behold, both prints came out fine.

I haven't tested this further, but I wonder if Sean's issue has something to do with printing directly from ProPhoto colorspace.

Jim
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=123601\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I gotta check this out too. Maybe I need to convert back to adobeRGB, rather than printing straight out of Lightroom using prophoto. Hmmm.....

Marc
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rdonson

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #44 on: June 18, 2007, 10:44:41 pm »

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I gotta check this out too. Maybe I need to convert back to adobeRGB, rather than printing straight out of Lightroom using prophoto. Hmmm.....

Marc
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I've had no problems printing from the ProPhoto colorspace with perceptual rendering and BPC.

My current favorite test print from Outback Print is in ProPhoto colorspace.  [a href=\"http://www.outbackprint.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html]Click here.[/url]
« Last Edit: June 18, 2007, 11:01:20 pm by rdonson »
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Regards,
Ron

EricWHiss

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #45 on: June 19, 2007, 02:07:59 am »

I'm not adding a solution but more questions.... I have to ask how can one make a judgment when the image contains colors that are OOG on both printer and display?  Certainly some of this problem/issue has to do with how color engines manage OOG color.  I wonder if the people that report differences between CS2 and CS3 have different color engines selected in their preferences? Or if somewhere along the data path different color engines are being used?     One other thought - on the mac os-x  one can select which color space is the conversion space by device in the color sync utility.  This is normally generic RGB ... not all that great for color spaces bigger than that.   Is there a windows analog to that?
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neil snape

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #46 on: June 19, 2007, 02:45:03 am »

Quote
I'm not adding a solution but more questions.... I have to ask how can one make a judgment when the image contains colors that are OOG on both printer and display?  Certainly some of this problem/issue has to do with how color engines manage OOG color.  I wonder if the people that report differences between CS2 and CS3 have different color engines selected in their preferences? Or if somewhere along the data path different color engines are being used?     One other thought - on the mac os-x  one can select which color space is the conversion space by device in the color sync utility.  This is normally generic RGB ... not all that great for color spaces bigger than that.   Is there a windows analog to that?
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Yes the printing architecture changes system wide and application level can have some side swiping . Definitely if you print with printer color management the data has to be sent with a space of some form, and that space has to be tagged or the XYZ coordinates included in the up front side for the driver to know at least what type of data color to be expected. The defaults will always be a less than ideal situation exception being if the driver/system is doing something worse than default color.
How do you tune for OofGamut? The only way I know of is to set the monitor saturation to less 20 or more in Photoshop color settings to simulate at least a type of smoothness between transitions in screen previews. It won't tell you a thing about the actual colors, but will show you where artifacts may lay in the image edits. Other than that just a lot of experience.

I've been using Adobe rgb for many years, but realise that with the advent of the Z printers and Canon many image colors are well outside Adobe rgb, and many colors in the image are if converted from raw to say Prophoto in range for a Z or Canon. Yet you won't see these colors on a monitor.
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EricWHiss

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #47 on: June 19, 2007, 03:16:32 am »

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Definitely if you print with printer color management the data has to be sent with a space of some form, and that space has to be tagged or the XYZ coordinates included in the up front side for the driver to know at least what type of data color to be expected. The defaults will always be a less than ideal situation exception being if the driver/system is doing something worse than default color.

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Neil,
Thanks for your response....sounds like one would never want to allow the printer to manage colors if it can be done from the application then?

To see what's OOG in my monitor space, I have been soft proofing with the monitor profile first then then printer profile.  I'll try the desaturate by 20% too.
Eric
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neil snape

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #48 on: June 19, 2007, 12:53:02 pm »

Sean,
I just had time to hack out your test image on the end of roll ID Glossy.
As expected prntr cm is lighter and not the same, the APS profile is the better of the easy or canned profiles, and just for a comparison printed through the canned profile with relative in Photoshop with Photoshop CM.
No surprises, and it prints better than the onscreen view. That is normal as I use a CRT for ref. that cannot show many of the sat colors in this test.
I had to scan it on my Epson so patching it together is hard, and the cm of scanned inks is not at all accurate. The scan is also converted here to sRGB so the pure cyans will be lost.

Visually the APS is a matrch to screen and the other two are more than acceptable. The canned profile is better than prntr cm, ond close to the APS profile in many areas.

http://homepage.mac.com/neil_snape/.Public...edVSprntrCM.jpg
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SeanPuckett

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #49 on: June 19, 2007, 01:23:31 pm »

Neil,

Thank you very much for this.

Your strip #2 and strip #3 look almost exactly like the test strips that drive me crazy. This is pretty solid evidence that our printers are rendering colour similarly.

The APC portrait in #3 is too dark and too saturated; it doesn't match my screen at all, while PM print #2 is a close match.

I really like strip #1 best overall.  

It could be that my monitor profiles are bad, but I do profile weekly with Pulse ColorElite + OptixXR in carefully controlled lighting, so I'm not sure how that could be the case.  I'll check my monitor profiles and recheck my workflow there.

Thanks again.  I've got some research to do now -- possibilities to examine.  That's more than I had last week.
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neil snape

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #50 on: June 19, 2007, 01:40:35 pm »

Yes it could be the monitor settings.
Download a demo of ColorEyes and you have three tries with the demo.
Always set the monitors to max 120cd/m2 for LCD and around 85-95 for CRT.
The APS as I said will print a little darker than printer color management or the canned or easy profiles by about 1/2 stop. They do absolutely match the original though as much as possible within the gamut of the CRT. I use a Just lightbox, and the monitor white point is set to 5500 K at 85 cd/m2 with L* gamma. I also see better smoothing with the APS than the HP profiles so again, APS is a worthwhile kit to have.
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rdonson

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #51 on: June 19, 2007, 01:57:52 pm »

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I also see better smoothing with the APS than the HP profiles so again, APS is a worthwhile kit to have.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=123783\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

It's sounding better all the time.

Neil, do you know if APS will correct the problem I see with reds on non-HP matte papers?
« Last Edit: June 19, 2007, 02:15:43 pm by rdonson »
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Ron

neil snape

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #52 on: June 19, 2007, 02:49:58 pm »

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It's sounding better all the time.

Neil, do you know if APS will correct the problem I see with reds on non-HP matte papers?
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Ah there's the catch. I haven't yet profiled stock like HP Smooth FA, witht he latest firmware. Before I preferred the Easy profiles on all matte papers. I don't know why Gretag can't profile mattes, but if the results are the same as before, APS isn't optimal for rag / matte. When I get time I'll give it a go though.

The reds on Smooth are okay, different in any case between both HP Print center (Easy) and APS.
There is only so much a profile can do, as the ink separations are what control the Dmax and Chroma to a large degree.

It's hard to say exactly what APS or how it will respond to other papers. I only have Hahnemuhle PR 308 and a few German matte papers here. I would like to see some Monaco profiles on the same media to see if just that needed extra bit of control will result in more pleasing color.
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rdonson

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #53 on: June 19, 2007, 07:02:45 pm »

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Ah there's the catch. I haven't yet profiled stock like HP Smooth FA, witht he latest firmware. Before I preferred the Easy profiles on all matte papers. I don't know why Gretag can't profile mattes, but if the results are the same as before, APS isn't optimal for rag / matte. When I get time I'll give it a go though.

The reds on Smooth are okay, different in any case between both HP Print center (Easy) and APS.
There is only so much a profile can do, as the ink separations are what control the Dmax and Chroma to a large degree.

It's hard to say exactly what APS or how it will respond to other papers. I only have Hahnemuhle PR 308 and a few German matte papers here. I would like to see some Monaco profiles on the same media to see if just that needed extra bit of control will result in more pleasing color.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=123793\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks for the insights, Neil.  I really appreciate it.  I've been considering when I get my HP rebate check of investing it in the APS.  I've found it a few places for around $750 U.S. which isn't too bad.
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Ron

SeanPuckett

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #54 on: June 20, 2007, 08:27:19 am »

I haven't had time to re-examine this issue in detail over the past few days because of other obligations, but my monitor calibration is different when using coloreyes than with pulse colorelite (damn x-rite for abandoning it).  I haven't forgotten this issue, and if it turns out that my core issue was inadequate monitor profiling rather than any severe printer fault, I will gladly reveal this (and modify post #1).
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mango

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #55 on: February 17, 2008, 04:38:48 pm »

Sean,

You seem happy with your colours now...what fixed it?
I am still having these problems

I am on v6 firmware.
Have APS
Using PS CS2 and Qimage on WinXP

Any advice would be very much appreciated
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wsolum

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #56 on: February 24, 2008, 02:48:21 pm »

This is mostly to bookmark this thread, but I printed the test images on RedRiver Pro Matte and the match was spot on except for blues and greens that are mostly out of gamut.   In order to get the detail I had to print in Perceptual and it matched my preview quite accurately.

I profiled this paper with the Pulse system rather than the onboard spectro.

Should those colors be accessible on matte paper?

Wayne



Quote
I've created a TIFF file in ProPhoto space with the above images and four other images I use to gauge soft proofs and colour accuracy.  It's sized to fit on a 24" wide roll taking up 5 inches of space.  3.7MB Test File

Curious to see the results others get, especially in the skin tones.

Now, if someone would send me a RIP to test....
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« Last Edit: February 24, 2008, 02:54:14 pm by wsolum »
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SeanPuckett

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z3100 Colour Issue
« Reply #57 on: February 25, 2008, 12:28:51 pm »

I got the colours mostly sorted by recalibrating everything I was using from top to bottom.  In the process, I discovered that my Sony panel has a break in it's RG colour mixing curve that makes some skin tones look slightly yellow while all other colours are correct.   Making sure that my monitor white levels was 120 and black level was calibrated to 0.5 helped a lot, also.  And using ColorEyes instead of Pulse for screen profiling.  And running the latest firmware on the printer.

I don't think the problems I was having point to just one failure.  I think that my monitors, my calibration and the printer were all off-kilter.  Sometimes these things cancel each other out.  In my case, it took everything way off base.

I'm happy now, mostly.  And experimenting with hand correction and Absolute Colourimetric printing.  V. interesting.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2008, 12:30:08 pm by SeanPuckett »
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