What's so great about Image Print?

[robgo2]

I am not a troll, nor am I trying to start a food fight.  I have read several threads in this forum discussing Image Print, so I thought that it might be fun and interesting to give it a try.  I am on a Demo version, and I have downloaded the appropriate profiles from the ColorByte website.  BTW, I am using a Mac Pro, OS 10.6.5, with a properly calibrated Apple 23" Cinema Display.  My printer is an Epson 3880.

What I see in my tests so far is that Image Print does achieve slightly better separation of colors and slightly better sharpness than CS5/Epson.  These are subtle differences, but real ones.  OTOH, IP prints are lighter and color accuracy and saturation are not as good.  I see this when comparing prints both to my monitor and to Photoshop prints of the same image.

So, what am I missing?  Are there some tricks to getting better colors from IP, or is it just an overpriced, overpraised program?  Going into this trial, I thought that the software was so sophisticated that it would produce perfect prints automatically.  Evidently, this is not the case.

Rob

[Czornyj]

Problem with latest Stylus Pro printers is that they are so good "out of the box", with such decent paper profiles, that there's really not much room for any significant quality improvements.

[chocodog]

Maybe you can try the mirage software this weekend too and give me your assessment on it. I'd like to hear the opinion of another new user.  This is the link for the video I found.  Cheers mate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du-idLkGvMw

[robgo2]

Problem with latest Stylus Pro printers is that they are so good "out of the box", with such decent paper profiles, that there's really not much room for any significant quality improvements.

Apparently Mark Dubovoy does not agree.  You can read his recent review of Image Print 8 right here on the LL website:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/in_search_of_the_ultimate_inkjet_print.shtml

I have been in contact with ColorByte's technical support and have continued to experiment with IP.  Changing rendering intent and black point level seems to make some difference in color saturation.  Unfortunately, running all of these tests has drained my cyan ink cart, so I can do no further testing until I can get a new supply next week.  In the meantime, I hope that people who have experience with Image Print will contribute to the discussion.

Rob

[narikin]

see this thread - a little search will find your topic is well covered:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=48035.0

[robgo2]

see this thread - a little search will find your topic is well covered:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=48035.0

I had already read that thread.  What I am trying to learn is if there are any little tricks to getting the best results from Image Print.  Presumably, there are some adjustments that will improve quality.

Rob

[Scott Martin]

Problem with latest Stylus Pro printers is that they are so good "out of the box", with such decent paper profiles, that there's really not much room for any significant quality improvements.

I second this observation but would like to expand it to include all 3 brands. ImagePrint's fine dither pattern and ICC profiles used to have an edge over the printer drivers and profiles that came with printers many years ago (5+), but times have changed. It's funny how people get "dug in" to a certain workflow and find it hard to change.

[robgo2]

I second this observation but would like to expand it to include all 3 brands. ImagePrint's fine dither pattern and ICC profiles used to have an edge over the printer drivers and profiles that came with printers many years ago (5+), but times have changed. It's funny how people get "dug in" to a certain workflow and find it hard to change.

Scott,

What about color issues related to the Mac OS?  There are many on this forum who consider that to be the Achilles heel of printing with a Mac, although how important it is in the real world is open to debate.  Image Print would bypass it entirely.

Rob

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Much of the ado is about Mac OS/X handling V4 profiles incorrectly and problems to achieve printing without profile conversions. The simple solution to the first problem is using V2 to profiles, regarding the second, Adobe has released a tool for printing without profiles.

I had some problems myself with printing with self made profiles and having the images turning out a bit to dark (like dE/L* -5 on middle tones) but my computer suddenly cured it self. So now it's printing almost perfect. Don't know what happened.

Best regards
Erik

Scott,

What about color issues related to the Mac OS?  There are many on this forum who consider that to be the Achilles heel of printing with a Mac, although how important it is in the real world is open to debate.  Image Print would bypass it entirely.

Rob

[madmanchan]

I am guessing what you are seeing is mostly a difference in the construction of the color profiles.

There are many criteria for bulding & evaluating the quality of a printer profile, and it is generally not possible to optimize for all of them at once. So it is not at all unusual that you would find a given profile (and driver, etc.) to perform better in some respects, and less well in other respects, compared to another system.

[ghaynes754]

Rob

Bit confused.  You mention quality and also saturation.  You said you saw the difference in gradations.  Besides the rendering intents you also typically have 5 choices for the color temperature of the display environment output.  Usually a couple of daylights and tungsten come to mind.  I personally do most of my printing with the RF2 profiles.  The quality is outstanding.  I have HDR prints that leap off the page (canvas) that really grab folks attention so saturation is not an issue.  I also think that IP8 is more efficient with ink usage.

In comparing prints from IP8 to those generated by CS5 what did you use for profiles on the CS5 side?  There will almost certainly be a viewing difference between profiles.

All I can tell you is that lots of pros I respect rave about the product.  Check out Will Crockett's review at shootsmarter.com.  Same is said for the post you mention here on LL. 

There probably isn't any "Staples" button one size fits all solution.  But for ease of use, not having to build profiles, excellent output and customer service that is solid you can't go wrong with IP.

[robgo2]

Rob

Bit confused.  You mention quality and also saturation.  You said you saw the difference in gradations.  Besides the rendering intents you also typically have 5 choices for the color temperature of the display environment output.  Usually a couple of daylights and tungsten come to mind.  I personally do most of my printing with the RF2 profiles.  The quality is outstanding.  I have HDR prints that leap off the page (canvas) that really grab folks attention so saturation is not an issue.  I also think that IP8 is more efficient with ink usage.

In comparing prints from IP8 to those generated by CS5 what did you use for profiles on the CS5 side?  There will almost certainly be a viewing difference between profiles.

All I can tell you is that lots of pros I respect rave about the product.  Check out Will Crockett's review at shootsmarter.com.  Same is said for the post you mention here on LL. 

There probably isn't any "Staples" button one size fits all solution.  But for ease of use, not having to build profiles, excellent output and customer service that is solid you can't go wrong with IP.

I use custom profiles created by Eric Chan.  I followed his recipe exactly in printing the targets.  The results that I get are good, but I am curious as to whether I can get even better results with Image Print.  Mostly, I wonder whether whatever color problems I have are inherent to the Mac OS, which is what got me thinking about using a RIP. 

One of the things that I don't like about IP is that the Preview image is absolutely awful--I mean useless for soft-proofing.  Does anyone else have the same problem?

Rob

[Mark Paulson]

I wouldn't us it if they where giving it away. I purchased a version for my Epson 2200 about 5 years ago. I decided to upgrade my printer a couple plus years ago and called John at Colorbyte and asked him which printer to go with. He advised that I buy a Canon. At that time Canons where advertised on their site as coming soon. Many calls and the response was always the same "a couple of months". Then 8 is announced and guess what...  no Canon support at all.  The software definitely made a difference on my 2200, but I can't see any advantage now days over a custom made profile. I would make my own or pay to have have a custom profile made.

[eleanorbrown]

Rob I am so glad someone else thinks the preview image is unusable... I'm on a Mac and this was the reason I stopped using IP... All shadows were totally blocked from 0 to about 20-23  or so.. Preview was useless.  Actually I'm now using good canned profiles...mainly epson, on wide format epson printers, printing from Lightroom and my prints look all as good as when I used IP. Eleanor

I use custom profiles created by Eric Chan.  I followed his recipe exactly in printing the targets.  The results that I get are good, but I am curious as to whether I can get even better results with Image Print.  Mostly, I wonder whether whatever color problems I have are inherent to the Mac OS, which is what got me thinking about using a RIP.  

One of the things that I don't like about IP is that the Preview image is absolutely awful--I mean useless for soft-proofing.  Does anyone else have the same problem?

Rob

[Scott Martin]

Scott,
What about color issues related to the Mac OS?  There are many on this forum who consider that to be the Achilles heel of printing with a Mac, although how important it is in the real world is open to debate.  Image Print would bypass it entirely.Rob

As Erik mentioned, using v2 profiles would be far more elegant then IP.

[Light Seeker]

As Erik mentioned, using v2 profiles would be far more elegant then IP.

Is there any downside to using v2 profiles?

Terry.

[Scott Martin]

Is there any downside to using v2 profiles?

Real world tests suggest there are none.

[robgo2]

As Erik mentioned, using v2 profiles would be far more elegant then IP.

Please excuse my ignorance.  What are v2 profiles?  Are they different from what I got from Eric Chan?

Rob

[digitaldog]

Real world tests suggest there are none.

Agreed and worse, V4 profiles can be problematic depending on too many factors to raise here (there is a recent thread about this on our forums).

I found IP’s blue shift to magenta an issue. I’m told its still showing up.
At least in the past, IP did handle ink delivery to the Epson in a more linear fashion and the dither was a bit better. And while it seems to be immune to some of the recent OS/Apple/Adobe/Epson “issues” its not historically immune to its own issues but to be honest, I haven’t played with a version since 6.0 or so.

Any software that has a utility called Spool Face gets points from me for having a sense of humor even if that isn’t the intention <g>

[Scott Martin]

Please excuse my ignorance.  What are v2 profiles?

You know how when you save an image in Photoshop,you can choose between saving it as a JPEG or JPEG 2000 file? Well, it's kinda like that. When you make an ICC profile, you can save it in either the v2 or v4 specification. The newer v4 specification has the potential to increase consistency across a workflow but hasn't seen as much widespread adoption as one would hope, and little-to-no real world benefits. It's not just a Mac problem - in fact, from my experience, the majority of apps that don't support support v4 profiles are Windows applications. Color management consultants tend to know to save profiles as v2 to avoid these problems and make things easy for their clients...