Z3100 strange color byeffect

[Ernst Dinkla]

Yesterday I had some spooling issues with larger files. To control them I tried some different settings for spool functions. On that path I encountered a strange thing:
in Preferences>Advanced>Advanced Printer Functions a color shift happens between ON and OFF for that feature. The function itself is described as a spooling function for metafiles etc but gives no indication that it has anything to do with color or color management. Related to the spooling problem I switched between 300 and 600 PPI and thought the difference in color could be related to that but for both resolution choices the same color shift happened when the Advanced Printer Functions is switched ON and OFF. OFF results in a low contrast unsaturated print, ON in the better color I'm used to. I always had that feature ON. This is with Application controlled ICM and a custom profile like I always use.

I'm translating the functions from the Dutch menu texts so it may not be similar to the actual English texts including the feature info. Is there any reference to color in the English text for that feature ?  I can not find more details in the manual either.

My best guesses are that there's double profiling happening or the media choice gets corrupted this way

Application instructions (like Qimage has) often recommend to take out any advanced spooling features of the driver to get the most reliable spooling. I wonder whether users that complained about the bad color quality hit on this "bug" because they have used the OFF setting from day one. I write "bug" as there may be a specific reason it does work like this on my system and not on other systems. So if someone else could try to create the same shift I can get on thicker ice.

This is with the latest firmware and driver on a Windows XP 2 system.

Edit:

This gets more weird: if one did select in the Printer Options>Advanced (page with the  many spooling choices) >Advanced Print Functions ON/OFF the OFF setting then the choice Preferences>Advanced>Advanced Printer Functions is no longer shown but could still be OFF or ON, at least those settings stay in my trials. I'm wasting a lot of paper already but it wouldn't surprise me that the same color effect then still happens and there's no transparency to the user on the settings. The info text is the same as in the Preferences menu. No color mentioned either.  

There's a horrible complexity in the Windows printer driver GUI where you can  make similar choices anywhere and you do not get the confirmation what rules in the end. On top of that the tighter interaction of the Z3100 driver with the printer on media selections than I was used to before. Add Qimage's tighter interaction as the frontend to the driver that  now quite often gets in conflict with the printer-driver interaction. For users there must be a good reason to buy an expensive RIP just to get a simpler interface, almost a contradiction. Any software developer should try to eliminate this complexity instead of increasing it just because it is fun to do the same thing on 3 spots.

Ernst Dinkla

try: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/

[marcsitkin]

Hi Ernst-

Not sure if you've run across this http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/august_2006.html

It's an explanation of the Advance printing features function by Mike Chaney, who authored the Q Image program.


I check my settings, and have only been printing to the Z with the Advanced features unchecked.

I use Q Image most of the time, and have the "Large Documents Raw Image option" checked, which is probably why advance printing is not checked in the Windows properties area.

[Ernst Dinkla]

Hi Ernst-

Not sure if you've run across this http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/august_2006.html

It's an explanation of the Advance printing features function by Mike Chaney, who authored the Q Image program.
I check my settings, and have only been printing to the Z with the Advanced features unchecked.

I use Q Image most of the time, and have the "Large Documents Raw Image option" checked, which is probably why advance printing is not checked in the Windows properties area.
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Marc,

I have been along all the spooling choices in the Z3100 driver and Qimage's interactive use of them in its options menu. The explanation by Mike is also available in another fashion on his site. But nowhere you will find a relation to color. The printing speed difference caused by using Raw or EMF is not significant enough to produce this shift I get.  I see it in small proof prints as well.

More likely is an embedded profile that goes through in one of the choices (RAW or EMF) and activates the driver CM despite that I have CM unchecked there. If you see the Print Processor choices for the HP driver then you get 5 types where my old Epson 10000 had just one. However the default one is the same for both if the datafile types they can handle are compared to one another.

I have some doubts how well the HP Z3100 driver copes with Qimage's interaction. On paper sizes it is quite clear that it doesn't work correctly, Qimage's log recalls do not set the HP paper sizes back while the right paper size is in the log file. Mike writes that the HP driver is not compatible if it doesn't work, could be true but I can not judge that. With this RAW versus EMF thing it wouldn't surprise me that similar issues exist but it surprises me that the RAW/EMF file/path affects color. In other words: even when the wrong data file goes along the right path it should not create other colors when the driver CM is OFF.

Ernst Dinkla

www.pigment-print.com