ImagePrint- extra colour in shadows

[shoebox9]

I read here long ago that someone using ImagePrint claimed it gave them extra colour detail in the shadow areas of their prints.  I can't find that thread now.

In my experience colour in the dark areas is normally very good with semi-gloss papers, but sufferes badly with mat fine art papers and canvas'.  Is this simply a technical limitation of these media types, or would buying ImagePrint with it's 16 bit based profiles help boost saturation availbility in the dark regions of Photo Rag, etc?

Help, my art paper prints are suffering! Any other suggestions?

[iancl]

Are you vigourously soft proofing your images? Does the reduced saturation in the shadows show up in your soft-proof?

I ask because I find that when I soft proof with my own profiles I get a very close estimate of the final print and often end up saturating selected parts of the image individually (often the shadows) as part of prepping for a matte paper (I use PhotoRag308 regularly).

I also find a large part of why colour seems less saturated on Matte papers -- and in the shadows especially -- is because the darks are not as dark and the eye makes darker colours seem more saturated. Still I sometimes have to go in and saturated certain parts independently.

Often by the time I have recurved the image in soft-proofing to bring back the toe of the curve, it looks truly horrible on screen.

However, if you do that and you still have problems, I can't help. I don't use Imageprint so I don't know if it works well for this issue.

[shoebox9]

Thanks for your answer.  What you are saying is true, but also time consuming for a busy portrait studio.  

Another less perfect "help" is to add a saturation adjustment layer in PS, and set the layer to only apply to the dark areas of the image (ie via the Blend If sliders in Layer Properties).  A solution that involved less manual labour, and delivered more colour into the shadows of mat papers (and canvas) would be worth money however.

[budjames]

I've been using ImagePrint for years. The current version on my Mac Pro running Leopard is 7.0.

I'm printing to an Epson R2400 currently. IP using their profiles always produces more details in the shadow areas than when I print directly from Photoshop CS3 or Lightroom 1.4.1 using the stock Epson profiles. It does take an extra step the prints with a lot of shadow areas, it's worth it.

I printed comparison lately for Epson Enhanced Matte paper between IP with their profiles and the standard Epson profiles printing directly from PS. The differences are very subtle now as compared to a few years ago. In fact, if I didn't have the 2 prints to compare side-by-side, I would be perfectly happy with the results using the Epson profiles.

That said, I use Hahnemuhler matte papers a lot and the profiles from IP are excellent. If you print a lot to non-Epson brand papers, the excellent profiles for IP are worth the investment in the IP software. You can download just about any paper/ink combination profiles from Colorbyte Software's web site for free as an owner of the IP software.

I print mostly fine art images in very low quantities so the extra work flow step is not a big deal. If I was a high volume shop like a wedding or portrait photographer, it might not be worth it. Besides, IP is expensive software, particularly if you are using a Pro-series Epson printer.

Cheers.

Bud James
North Wales, PA

[chez]

I've been using ImagePrint for years. The current version on my Mac Pro running Leopard is 7.0.

I'm printing to an Epson R2400 currently. IP using their profiles always produces more details in the shadow areas than when I print directly from Photoshop CS3 or Lightroom 1.4.1 using the stock Epson profiles. It does take an extra step the prints with a lot of shadow areas, it's worth it.

I printed comparison lately for Epson Enhanced Matte paper between IP with their profiles and the standard Epson profiles printing directly from PS. The differences are very subtle now as compared to a few years ago. In fact, if I didn't have the 2 prints to compare side-by-side, I would be perfectly happy with the results using the Epson profiles.

That said, I use Hahnemuhler matte papers a lot and the profiles from IP are excellent. If you print a lot to non-Epson brand papers, the excellent profiles for IP are worth the investment in the IP software. You can download just about any paper/ink combination profiles from Colorbyte Software's web site for free as an owner of the IP software.

I print mostly fine art images in very low quantities so the extra work flow step is not a big deal. If I was a high volume shop like a wedding or portrait photographer, it might not be worth it. Besides, IP is expensive software, particularly if you are using a Pro-series Epson printer.

Cheers.

Bud James
North Wales, PA
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Have you ever tried a custom profile made for your printer and compared that to the IP produced photos. Just wondering which would be the better way to go.