Gamut and profiling

[sloow]

Hello,

I was trying out a Fabriano watercolour paper, and did a printer calibration followed by a paper calibration, and when I went to print the image, the black is nowhere near the black that is printed in the calibration image. What am I doing wrong? I've chosen the Fabriano profile as the paper type, starting with the >250g fine art paper profile. Do I have to run the calibration test twice or something? I have an image (a poor one taken with my cell phone) that shows what I mean.

photo_of_print_and_print_calibration

My question is; how can I get the gamut out of the printer that it's obviously capable of?

thanks
Paul

[Brian Gilkes]

Paul,
I've printed on Fabriano, coated and uncoated. Both can be  low on DMax compared with Arches, Somerset and others. All the same if your exact conditions for making the profile and printing the work are duplicated there is no reason results should not be the same. All I can say is check everything very carefully.
What printer and inkset are you using? Are you printing out of Photoshop?
Brian
www.pharoseditions.com.au

[rdonson]

Paul, did you soft proof your image with the new profile and make adjustments based on what you saw in the softproof?

[Dale_Cotton]

Any chance you don't have black point compensation on in Photoshop, if you're using Photoshop?

[sloow]

rdonson, I'm using the Z3100, with the Vivera inkset, and generated the profile using the built in spectrometer, but I'm led to doubt that the profile is being employed because of how poorly the image appears. Also, in Photoshop, I clicked on the options to print all the graphic elements such as calibration, cropping and colour marks, and the black that is printed there is not the same black that the machine prints when it generates the profile patches.

In terms of the soft proof, I didn't make any adjustments after reading the first output. I'm just trying to figure out how to use the profiles that the machine generates when you give it new paper.

Thanks for your comments  Brian, I think more careful checking is the order of the day. Somewhere there is a disconnect between making the profile and using it as far as I can see.

I always wondered what black point compensation was.. I'll check that out. Unfortunately, I am out of town and won't be getting to my printer until the weekend.

thank you all for responding.