Epson velvet fine art paper on 3800

[David Sutton]

I've been really enjoying the new printer, but noticed it did seem to lay down a lot of ink with the canned profile from Epson on Velvet Fine Art paper. (softproofing in Photoshop and printing through Qimage). Often the paper would be very damp and occasionally I'd get spots of blue ink on the paper with images with a lot of sky.
So I've done my own profile with Spyder3Print (225 patch target with extended greys) and it came out much dryer and looked fine. Until I compared it to the Epson-profiled print. The extra ink gives waves, for example, an almost three dimensional look. There is about the same amount of shadow in both, just darker in the Epson profile. Not necessarily a good thing, depending on the subject. Softproofing shows my profile to be slightly lighter, but can't show how the extra ink makes the print "pop". I'd prefer to keep learning how to do my own profiling if possible, so before I use up a lot of paper experimenting with how far to go setting "blacks to black" or looking at perhaps contrast, I wondered if anyone has advice on where to go to from here. Thanks in advance, David
Ps. There are only so many hours in the the day. I've got Diallo"s "Mastering Digital B&W" and Johnson's "Mastering Digital Printing" but re-reading them at my speed is going to take a long time.  

[SteveZ]

Everything you'd ever want to know about printing with the Epson 3800 including Free custom profiles for ABW.
He's the master.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Ep...bwprofiles.html

[David Sutton]

Everything you'd ever want to know about printing with the Epson 3800 including Free custom profiles for ABW.
He's the master.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Ep...bwprofiles.html

Yes, Eric Chan's site is a great source of information. Still probably have overlooked some of his links.

[billg71]

Try going into the driver - Paper Config, and dropping the Color Density anywhere from 5-10%. I use the 3800 for gloss now, but I have to drop 10% on the 4800 to keep matte papers from coming out wet and curled. Seems like when I was using the 3800 for matte it was around 7% or so, a little less than the 4800.

HTH,
Bill

[David Sutton]

Try going into the driver - Paper Config, and dropping the Color Density anywhere from 5-10%. I use the 3800 for gloss now, but I have to drop 10% on the 4800 to keep matte papers from coming out wet and curled. Seems like when I was using the 3800 for matte it was around 7% or so, a little less than the 4800.

HTH,
Bill

Cool, thank you very much Bill. That should do it.

Another question to anyone who can help: Looking in daylight at the photo printed from from my own profile, I think it has more potential than the Epson profile for what I want to do. I think I can work out how to break an image into test strips to find the look I'm after, but if I want to lay down a little more ink in parts of one strip, is that done with a Hue/saturation layer with mask? David

[madmanchan]

I would really not recommend doing it that way. The default Epson ink limits are generally set up well with respect to the Epson papers like VFA and changing the ink limit is going to affect the gamut and d-max, most likely in a negative way. Matte prints do come out "wavy" and "kinda wet" on the 3800 and that is normal. Just let them rest and dry.

As for the image editing with test strips, you really should be using a soft proof as your guide. I would think more in terms of your visual guide as opposed to thinking in the low-levels terms of how much ink gets put down.

[billg71]

I would really not recommend doing it that way. The default Epson ink limits are generally set up well with respect to the Epson papers like VFA and changing the ink limit is going to affect the gamut and d-max, most likely in a negative way. Matte prints do come out "wavy" and "kinda wet" on the 3800 and that is normal. Just let them rest and dry.

As for the image editing with test strips, you really should be using a soft proof as your guide. I would think more in terms of your visual guide as opposed to thinking in the low-levels terms of how much ink gets put down.

Eric's correct, playing with color density is something that shouldn't be done casually. In my case, prints were coming out so wet and curled they'd never dry flat unless weighted and pressed and the shadows were heavily blocked up. So I did a series of prints reducing ink limits from 5-15% in 1% increments, evaluating them after they dried to make sure I wasn't adversely affecting gamut and D-max. As I said, I don't remember what the results were for the 3800 but my 4800 is pretty reliable at -10%. Prints still come out damp at that setting but they dry down just fine. My first 3800, a re-furb, put out prints so wet the ink would run off the paper if tilted. Epson replaced it with a new unit and it works fine at factory settings on PK papers, it just needed a little tweaking for MK.

As to your last question, I'm going to suggest you shell out some money and invest in two DVD's: JP Caponigro's The Art of Proofing and his Drawing With Light: 21st Century Dodging and Burning. They're pricey but, as the old saying goes, "cheap at twice the price". he has some really innovative techniques for dealing with both subjects. They're available here: http://jpc.acmeeducational.com/jpc/index.html

HTH,
Bill

[David Sutton]

Thank you both for your replies. Bill- another 2 DVDs compared to the investment so far will be a drop in the ocean. David