kodak unsupported paper change HELP re machine profiles

[AdAstra]

HELP!!!!!!  kodak have left us and our lab in a terrible pickle with an unsupported change from kodak SupraEndura to kodak SupraEnduraVC digital paper. The results initially were truly horrible, the kodak tech left our lab with a black of 235 with pronounced cyan hues and reduced blocked up reds with a magenta cast, in other words we couldn't deliver. After several rounds of tests the lab has switched to an old Fuji profile that allows a real black, but with a red cast. The resulting colours are pretty boppy, which can be controlled with more rounds of tests and curve development. Perhaps some of you out there are struggling with the same thing and could help. I have delivered 1700 albums at the upper end of the market, and we really care about colour and we are still unable to deliver proper colour 3 days later. kodak have promised some patch by the end of the week, but I remember a previous lab owner suing kodak successfully (settlement over 6 figures) over this issue of profiles for various machines including Noritsu and Pegasus some years ago even after quite a few kodak revisions.

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Australia can not use American paper (lets not go there!), and I believe kodak have pulled out of manufacturing in Brazil leaving with Chinese paper. (now the latest is that the kodak paper is manufactured in London?!!! and that the kodak china plant is shut)

On initial testing it appears that the new kodak SupraEnduraVC digital paper has reds shifted to magenta and less colours in the primaries,probably a result obviously less silver, and maybe cheaper layers in the reds. Our lab, a small semiprolab in Melbourne who have always had very good colour run a Noritsu 2901 as well as Pegasus, and have been trying to patch together machine profiles to help with new kodak printing paper. We are $6,000 down already in 3 days (we do 150 weddings per year) , we have run many test sheets and are getting to passable but not great results from this new kodak paper with the aid of a Fuji machine profile and various versions of our output curves.

May be some of you in this community are experiencing similar problems with the new kodak SupraEnduraVC digital paper and could help.

latest tests with the Fuji channel show a too cheerful palette with red blacks, somewhat blocked up.

it would be good if someone had found a way to expand out the blacks and reds in this new kodak SupraEnduraVC digital paper.

Also I am after various test colour wheels preferably with coordinates in order to test to understand the new characteristics of file/paper interface. I have 21 and 51 step grey ramps, but nothing similar in colour after about 30mins on google. Does anyone have web addresses re colour wheels and patches that finely describe a colour space? (It is super tedious making hundreds of patches, I remember doing this at RMIT with the colour enlarger for "painting" with various exposure of colours and lith film masks)

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Thanks guys

Sally

[AdAstra]

I was hoping that with all your experience and care in colour rendition shown by users on this forum that someone(s) would be able to describe the process they used to optimise their setup, be it printing to Epson or not, to help me get ideas. The new paper seems more similar to the Epson process in that the colours are more saturated and blocked up compared to the old paper. This might be good for landscapes, but maybe someone out there has tried to get maximum performance out of their setup and has gone through similar ranges of tests which we have done now 3x in 17 years. This time the problem has much higher consequences due to servicing a 1.4M property loan and three times as many weddings per year.

Our screens are set to good results for web or 4 colour output and Pegasus. The Pegasus has needed only a slight saturate (4 units). Our Noritsu curve had previously saturated 10 units, pushed to yellow, had an edge sharpen and bitten into the blacks 4 units in selective colour and our business has been able to sustain a long standing reputation for very high quality rich vibrant or subtle and interesting colours.

Without all the previous adjustments in the Fuji channel patch I am left with red/cyan cross and a bleed in the magenta blacks (reminds me of the early Pegasus setup problems 14 years ago) and supposedly the new paper has  "richer, more vibrant colors thanks to significantly increased color gamut." and "Kodak's research scientists were able to increase the color gamut even further. This new paper gives labs the capability to enhance color, while maintaining consistent, high-quality flesh-tone reproduction. Text and graphics are also not only more vivid, they are extremely crisp and precise—" particularly "SUPRA ENDURA VC Digital Paper also features improved ‘digital fringing’ performance. Prints will be sharper, and line and text reproduction will improve. "

Assuming we can correct the cross in levels and try and expand colour definition in the reds with curves/and or selective colour we will be still left with bleedy blacks which means coarser looking prints due to ramping up machine sharpening factors which was the previous cure to this problem.

THERE IS NO MORE OF THE OLD PAPER WORLD WIDE (we have been told)

Even though I can now get reasonable flesh tones and neutrals,  accurate performance in the more saturated areas of a print is sometime off (I was accurate to 1%, and we had a pile of wonderful colour enhancement and specialised personalised colour tone routines/shortcuts which now have to be modified) we still seem to be left with the bleeding shadows and text, super fantastic for the lab's service to schools, clubs debs etc and annoying for us.

Descriptions of your approaches to colour setup, and dealing with the reduced numbers of colours with Epsons compared to regular photo paper, and dealing with colour fringing problems (It is not the obvious, the tech is very experienced and worked on the machine for over 2 days) would be greatly appreciated.

and

hopefully someone can point the way to useful colour patch/field tools or ramps to save me hours and hours of time constructing one. Using posterise on the rainbow roll I have found is allright but not so accurate.

[Wayne Fox]

whoa.  That's a wall of text I'm not fighting through.  May want to try a concise explanation of the problem if you want it read ... don't waste readers time with your venting at Kodak.

I hope you get some help, although I'm perplexed at the problems.  We moved to the new paper without any problems on our 185 or so Noritsu printers some time ago.  Granted we don't use a fully color managed workflow, more of a traditional color lab workflow, but I don't see much difference in the end result.  My tech support group said it was a matter of some new calibration presets from Noritsu, not much else.

Not much comfort I know.  The only reason I decided to post anything is most of those that frequent this forum don't use this type of equipment, and it ain't no Epson (even if you do think it should be a similar workflow), so many won't really have any ideas with silver halide printing like this.

What I would suggest is a discussion with your printer manufacturers tech group and a careful analysis of your workflow and tools, because I don't think it's the paper.

[AdAstra]

Dear Wayne, thanks so much for your reply

In short, I'm having to redo our overall output curves and 20 or so specialised actionised pathways involved 4-5 masked steps each that industrialise our "look". After 5 rounds of testings I nearly have busted the cross and now have a clean grey ramp and normal neutrals through revised output curve series, but the values for more saturated reds and blue seem to have shifted slightly and that means I would need to adjust all my actionised pathways.

It would be great to find/ buy testing target ramps or wheels to finely define the colour field to help me reduce the large amount of testing to redo the industrialisation of our looks. Kodak in Melbourne say they no longer have them. Noritsu in Sydney the same. Does anyone know where you can get some? (not just percentages of the 6 main colours, something more sophisticated)

Now about the genesis of my problem (phone calls to Noritsu this morning)

Noritsu has not made new look up tables for the whole range of printers, so our labs printer was not on disk 7.11 supplied to Kodak and available for purchase for $200 2 months ago to supply profiles for the new Supra Endura VC Digital Paper.

Noritsu said that at the end of September the new look up tables will be built in Japan, which is approx 4 months after the disk was circulated, and 6 weeks after there is no more stocks of the old paper available worldwide

Our lab have a large service contract with Kodak for both printers, and officially it is their responsibility.

At the end of the day it easy to say that neither is at fault or both are at fault, but the end result is the same, we have loss of time and cashflow and we have to help ourselves, and then repeat the process again in September.

Finding someone who has done similar testing or has targets would be a big help.