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Author Topic: z3100 profiling  (Read 2377 times)

Panopeeper

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z3100 profiling
« on: January 16, 2008, 06:02:41 pm »

The company, which prints my images, got an x3100 printer. It is not in normal operation yet, but they printed a black and white sample for me, glossy, semi and canvas.

The glossy paper is from HP and the print is very good. However, they do not have yet anything else, so they used Epson semigloss and canvas. The printer profiled itself, I saw the colored octogons. However, the semi-gloss is purplish and the canvas is greenish.

I read Michael's review of the printer, and it seems that its self-profiling should work well.

What can have caused the strange results?
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Gabor

Geoff Wittig

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z3100 profiling
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2008, 10:33:43 pm »

I can think of a few possibilities. The profiling process does seem to give pretty accurate color matching, at least for me, but the "color" of paper white has a lot of influence on perceived tone of a black & white print. Epson's premium luster and premium semigloss have pretty aggressive optical brightening agents and tend to look quite blue when placed next to a cotton rag paper without OBA's. No matter what the profile does, highlights on these papers are going to lean toward the cool/blue/purple end of the spectrum. This is fine if you're aiming for something that looks like a selenium-toned darkroom print, but not if you want something warmer. I would bet that the Epson canvas your printer used has a warmer "paper white". When I tried printing BW images with cool highlight toning on warmer papers, I got greenish highlights that really looked bad. Lesson learned.

Just my guess.
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rdonson

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z3100 profiling
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2008, 10:40:24 pm »

Quote
The company, which prints my images, got an x3100 printer. It is not in normal operation yet, but they printed a black and white sample for me, glossy, semi and canvas.

The glossy paper is from HP and the print is very good. However, they do not have yet anything else, so they used Epson semigloss and canvas. The printer profiled itself, I saw the colored octogons. However, the semi-gloss is purplish and the canvas is greenish.

I read Michael's review of the printer, and it seems that its self-profiling should work well.

What can have caused the strange results?
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How did they print the b&w?  Did they print grayscale in the driver and let the printer manage color?  That's what works best for b&w on this printer unless you get into QTR profiles like Ernst.
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Regards,
Ron

Panopeeper

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z3100 profiling
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2008, 10:55:32 pm »

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How did they print the b&w

I gave them a greyscale image in TIFF. They printed the very same image on both papers and the canvas.

The glossy was excellent quality, but I don't like that plastic-shiny, highly reflective look.
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Gabor

rdonson

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z3100 profiling
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2008, 11:01:16 pm »

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I gave them a greyscale image in TIFF. They printed the very same image on both papers and the canvas.

The glossy was excellent quality, but I don't like that plastic-shiny, highly reflective look.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167722\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yes, but how did they use the HP print driver?  Its best to tell it to print grayscale and let the printer manage CM.  If they printed it just like it was a color print then it won't be an optimal print from the printer and you may see color casts like you describe.

Perhaps I don't understand the problem you see in the prints.  Is there a color cast to the b&w prints or are you just commenting on the colors you saw in the printed profiling targets?
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Regards,
Ron

Panopeeper

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z3100 profiling
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2008, 11:34:46 pm »

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Yes, but how did they use the HP print driver?  Its best to tell it to print grayscale and let the printer manage CM.

Thanks, I will tell it to them.

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Perhaps I don't understand the problem you see in the prints.  Is there a color cast to the b&w prints or are you just commenting on the colors you saw in the printed profiling targets?

Of course I was referring to the resulted print, not to the colors of the calibration (I don't know anyway how those should look, but that was the proof, that they did the profiling).

The matt image was very purplish, and the canvas greenish. The lab leader made these prints and was very disappointed with them, but they don't get any other paper for a while. They are still operating an Epson 7600 and have lots of paper; this printer is in experimental phase, the lab leader made these prints only for me, I could not even order one normally.

I did not see the calibration pattern on the matt paper. Perhaps they used an Epson profile without calibration; I will ask that.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2008, 11:35:05 pm by Panopeeper »
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Gabor

neil snape

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z3100 profiling
« Reply #6 on: January 17, 2008, 02:17:46 am »

These are more or less standard staples for art printing. I had profiled many such types and didn't find any problems. Usually there is a double profiling situation if they select the paper AFTER they have set up the quality mode etc.  There is a problem of stickyness? in the driver where it forgets the initial settings. It's not a hard printer to use, in fact very logical. It's just that if coming from another brand sometimes all it takes is one check box not noticed and the colors will be off.
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