Best material for Lightbox exhibition

[neil snape]

I heard Kodak backlit film was good with the 3100.

I can imagine the Epson would be at least as good or better since it is specced for more recent inks.

Just a note on the OEM making the media: they are specified by the customer in most cases and are optimised for the clients needs. Just because the OEM maker has a listing that is similar does not at all mean it is the same. This is not to say it doesn't work , just that more often than not, the optimised OEM branded media just work a little or a lot better.


The Z printers obviously cannot profile in a transmissive mode. Maybe taping the film to a backing will fetch some type of result if it is tricked into thinking it is just a normal print.
I just looked at the profile supplied for HP 3200 backlit material. It looks to be a standard ICC profile with some radical curves inside it probably to control inking. I suppose how you have to correlate the profile must be to a known light source at a specified intensity otherwise how could it be made?

Still wondering if the imaging on these inkjet materials are similar to duratrans ?

[worldburger]

I can imagine the Epson would be at least as good or better since it is specced for more recent inks.

I have identical prints from the Z3100 w/ their HP Premium Vivid Color Backlit and the 7900 w/ Epson's DisplayTrans.  They look almost identical when backlit.  However, the big deal for me was what Lorenz said earlier in this thread: the HP Premium Vivid Color Backlit looks equally good frontlit as a normal print (the Epson is noticeably darker).

Does anyone here have a profile for the HP Prem Vivid Color Backlit on the Epson 7900/9900?  I'd be curious if it works as well as it does on HP's printers.

Just a note on the OEM making the media: they are specified by the customer in most cases and are optimised for the clients needs. Just because the OEM maker has a listing that is similar does not at all mean it is the same. This is not to say it doesn't work , just that more often than not, the optimised OEM branded media just work a little or a lot better.

Good to know, thanks!

The Z printers obviously cannot profile in a transmissive mode. Maybe taping the film to a backing will fetch some type of result if it is tricked into thinking it is just a normal print.
I just looked at the profile supplied for HP 3200 backlit material. It looks to be a standard ICC profile with some radical curves inside it probably to control inking. I suppose how you have to correlate the profile must be to a known light source at a specified intensity otherwise how could it be made?

Still wondering if the imaging on these inkjet materials are similar to duratrans ?

It was said earlier that profiling the film as reflective won't give a good profile.  Too dark and color shifts and so on.

With an Eye-One how can one measure emissive colors that aren't on a monitor?  Is it possible to lay a profiling test chart on the lightbox and measure the colors based on the lightbox?

Maybe someone has a work-around, here was my failed attempt: I printed one of Bill Atkinson's profiles on the Epson DisplayTrans Backlit film.  Then I dropped the reference file in the monitor folder in MeasureTool's folder.  Then I loaded MeasureTool and setup the Eye-One for "Emission".  The chart loads fine, but when I get to measuring it, it gives me an error (of course, because the monitor wants to display the color on the screen).

[Ernst Dinkla]

The Z printers obviously cannot profile in a transmissive mode. Maybe taping the film to a backing will fetch some type of result if it is tricked into thinking it is just a normal print.
I just looked at the profile supplied for HP 3200 backlit material. It looks to be a standard ICC profile with some radical curves inside it probably to control inking. I suppose how you have to correlate the profile must be to a known light source at a specified intensity otherwise how could it be made?

I doubt one can do that job with any normal spectrometer in its reflective reading mode. The dynamic range of back lit on a light box is extreme compared to reflective prints. A transmissive densito meter + calibrated light box and patch reading is probably used for that kind of jobs. But some normal spectrometers can be used for monitor calibration and profiling. With similar dynamic ranges. The difference is that the backlit film is printed CMYKetc subtractive and the monitor RGB additive. Looks like a hacker's job: reading patches of a backlit target on a freshly calibrated monitor (say 5000K) with a spectrometer + adapted software. Another ArgyllCMS project.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/

[neil snape]

To answer you both: yes I know that printing a would be transparent chart and reading it as a positive reflective is going to be much different than a true transmissive read chart.

That is not to say it has not been done before. Some users have done just that if you search on the Colorsync users group over the years with varying degrees of success. Not many people have a transmissive spectro. I thought about getting one in the days of outputting to Lightjet 2080 film recorders but I'm glad I didn't. At least they are much cheaper than a spheric spectro for laminated surfaces!

[worldburger]

To answer you both: yes I know that printing a would be transparent chart and reading it as a positive reflective is going to be much different than a true transmissive read chart.

That is not to say it has not been done before. Some users have done just that if you search on the Colorsync users group over the years with varying degrees of success. Not many people have a transmissive spectro. I thought about getting one in the days of outputting to Lightjet 2080 film recorders but I'm glad I didn't. At least they are much cheaper than a spheric spectro for laminated surfaces!

Have you given it a shot?  The question I'd ask is: do you think the transmissive-read profile you'd create would be any better than the one HP would produce?  

Post your findings if you give it a whack.

I'm still curious if anyone has a workaround to create an emissive-generated ICC with an Eye-One, a lightbox, and printed targets.  That's the solution I am focusing my energy on (until someone tells me it's a waste of time).

[neil snape]

Have you given it a shot?  The question I'd ask is: do you think the transmissive-read profile you'd create would be any better than the one HP would produce?  

Post your findings if you give it a whack.

I'm still curious if anyone has a workaround to create an emissive-generated ICC with an Eye-One, a lightbox, and printed targets.  That's the solution I am focusing my energy on (until someone tells me it's a waste of time).

I do have a few sheets of transparent material but too small to profile.

IF you make a light box to profile you can set a 3200 K tungsten source under a frosted plexi, , measure the white of the light with i1 Share, then use this in Profile Maker as a source light. Fluorescent tubes have too many peaks to make the sample points correlate.

If I remember right HP have Spectrolino T tables for making profiles. Will a home brew be better? Probably not.

[worldburger]

IF you make a light box to profile you can set a 3200 K tungsten source under a frosted plexi, , measure the white of the light with i1 Share, then use this in Profile Maker as a source light. Fluorescent tubes have too many peaks to make the sample points correlate.

Thanks for the info, Neil.  So once I've measured the light source white point thru the plexi, how would I trick the Eye-One software to let me scan the patches without the puck lighting them as if they were reflective?

Perhaps someone can fill me in on ProfileMaker's functionality: is it possible to scan an emissive target with a reference file?  The Eye-One MeasureTool only seems to allow me to use the emissive function to calibrate the monitor.

[neil snape]

Thanks for the info, Neil.  So once I've measured the light source white point thru the plexi, how would I trick the Eye-One software to let me scan the patches without the puck lighting them as if they were reflective?

Perhaps someone can fill me in on ProfileMaker's functionality: is it possible to scan an emissive target with a reference file?  The Eye-One MeasureTool only seems to allow me to use the emissive function to calibrate the monitor.

What if you used the Profile Maker Measure tool, in demo mode, measured each patch in a transmissive mode, then massaged the data to fit the chart structure (see sample reference charts) . Now , how you build an output referred transmissive chart from i1 Match > not sure you can do this. An input chart would have to be for an IT8 / but that is not the direction you want. You need to send a set of numbers to be output , read the colours ( T- mode) that are produced, then create a profile that describes these numbers producing the measured colours on the device.

Perhaps it is just easiest to use Measure Tool and send the file to someone who has ProfileMaker the txt file for profile creation. You should still measure the light source and use that as your light source in Measure Tool coming from i1 Share or measure Tool itself.

[neil snape]

Thanks for the info, Neil.  So once I've measured the light source white point thru the plexi, how would I trick the Eye-One software to let me scan the patches without the puck lighting them as if they were reflective?

Perhaps someone can fill me in on ProfileMaker's functionality: is it possible to scan an emissive target with a reference file?  The Eye-One MeasureTool only seems to allow me to use the emissive function to calibrate the monitor.

What if you used the Profile Maker Measure tool, in demo mode, measured each patch in a transmissive mode, then massaged the data to fit the chart structure (see sample reference charts) . Now , how you build an output referred transmissive chart from i1 Match > not sure you can do this. An input chart would have to be for an IT8 / but that is not the direction you want. You need to send a set of numbers to be output , read the colours ( T- mode) that are produced, then create a profile that describes these numbers producing the measured colours on the device.

Perhaps it is just easiest to use Measure Tool and send the file to someone who has ProfileMaker the txt file for profile creation. You should still measure the light source and use that as your light source in Measure Tool coming from i1 Share or measure Tool itself.