Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: ricgal on January 10, 2008, 04:44:19 pm
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I am producing a body of work that i wish to exhibit on lightboxes- The final images are scanned 5 x 4 neg film- I have a z3100 and would like to print myself but i know pigments are not very translucient so i am wondering about the alternatives- Duratran+lightjet?
Wisdom appreciated!
Ric
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I am producing a body of work that i wish to exhibit on lightboxes- The final images are scanned 5 x 4 neg film- I have a z3100 and would like to print myself but i know pigments are not very translucient so i am wondering about the alternatives- Duratran+lightjet?
Wisdom appreciated!
Ric
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=166382\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Epson has just released a very nice media for this. I just finished building a profile for them. I used a 7880 and the output was quite nice. I don't know how it would work on a Z3100 (you'd be on your own for a profile) but the material which is on 24" rolls makes a very nice backlit print!
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Epson has just released a very nice media for this. I just finished building a profile for them. I used a 7880 and the output was quite nice. I don't know how it would work on a Z3100 (you'd be on your own for a profile) but the material which is on 24" rolls makes a very nice backlit print!
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=166414\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Andrew, does the product have a name?
The Z3100 has a built-in spectro so creating a profile is easy. Figuring out a paper type to use isn't always so obvious. Does this product take a heavy ink load? What's the paper type used on the Epson?
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Andrew, does the product have a name?
The Z3100 has a built-in spectro so creating a profile is easy. Figuring out a paper type to use isn't always so obvious. Does this product take a heavy ink load? What's the paper type used on the Epson?
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The Z3100 can't profile transparent materials - it's a shame...
But hey, we can't have everything...
M
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Is it possible to profile transparent materials with the EyeOne Pro. I too do lightbox prints usually on duratrans. I just tested out some backlit inkjet paper from inkjet art, but was perplexed at how to profile it.
Thanks,
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The Z3100 can't profile transparent materials - it's a shame...
But hey, we can't have everything...
M
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=166503\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I don't know the name (I'm on the road, don't even recall if the box I got had a name). I think its just called Epson Transparent blacklit media at this time.
The Z isn't going to handle a profile on this media, that requires a very special Spectrophotometer.
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I am producing a body of work that i wish to exhibit on lightboxes- The final images are scanned 5 x 4 neg film- I have a z3100 and would like to print myself but i know pigments are not very translucient so i am wondering about the alternatives- Duratran+lightjet?
Wisdom appreciated!
Ric
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=166382\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Ric,
I've used the Z3100 to prnt on HP colorlucent backlit material with success. I profiled it on the Z and then printed successfully. When it is too light when on the light box I increase the saturation about 10 points (it varies on the image) and darken in curves about 5-10% (again depending on image). I've also printed on Kodak ID premium luster paper and when on light box it displays ery nicely.
Richard Galosy
517-719-1913
RichardGalosy.com
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Ric,
I've used the Z3100 to prnt on HP colorlucent backlit material with success. I profiled it on the Z and then printed successfully. When it is too light when on the light box I increase the saturation about 10 points (it varies on the image) and darken in curves about 5-10% (again depending on image). I've also printed on Kodak ID premium luster paper and when on light box it displays ery nicely.
Richard Galosy
517-719-1913
RichardGalosy.com
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=166541\")
So far I never had backlit media that could create enough density/saturation to show the full contrast possible on a lightbox. I practice I always recommend to print two and sandwich them on the lightbox to get that contrast. Is it different with the media discussed here ?
Ernst Dinkla
try: [a href=\"http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/[/url]
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The Z3100 can't profile transparent materials - it's a shame...
But hey, we can't have everything...
M
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=166503\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
True, it depends on the backing for me. If the backing is clear the machine fails. If the backing is reflective like paper it works OK.
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I've been printing backlits on an HP5000 for years now, using the pigment ink set. I've had good success with the HP Colorlucent media, as well as Kodak universal backlit film.
You might start with those.
Profiling has always been a tough issue for backlits. I've only gotten good results using HP's profile (canned) via the windows drivers, bypassing my RIP.
You might want to contact HP and see if they can build you a profile for their media on the Z3100. Should be the fastest way to good prints.
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Thank you all for your input- I will have a go- I am imagining that pigment ink is a bad starting point because it is by nature opaque. How does Jeff Wall do his stuff? Can Duratran go through lightjet and has anyone been able to compare it to inkjet on backlit?
Thanks
Ric
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hi everyone,
we print several thousand square feet of backlit prints every month.
in the past we used Kodak's 1200i in combination with Qi Pigment ink and the Kodak Universal Backlit 8mil film. Resulted in wonderful prints that feature one unique plus: the transmissive and the refelctive results are equally good. unfortunately Encad/Kodak simply ended their support on these printers and getting spare parts for our fleet of five 60" beauties put us on the market for something new...
after researching the current media for our HP Z6100 printers with the current Virvera inks we have had to acknowledge that pretty much the only campatible backlit (at least for the moment) is HP's new Premium Vivid Color Backlit Film. does take an incredible anmount of ink without bronzing (major drawback of the Vivera inks) and has in incredible gamut.
BUT you will have to find your way into a profile that was set up with a spectro like the X-Rite DTP41T or the Barbieri Spectro LFP RT. for a decent backlit used in a lightbox profiling with the built in i1 will not work well - the visual impression of the backlit was simply much, much to light plus strange color shifts. simply pulling the curves up did not work - the "right" profile solved the issue...
regarding shaddows and really, really dark tones - no problem with the vivera inks on the media. Black as black can get...
regards,
lorenz
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BUT you will have to find your way into a profile that was set up with a spectro like the X-Rite DTP41T or the Barbieri Spectro LFP RT. for a decent backlit used in a lightbox profiling with the built in i1 will not work well - the visual impression of the backlit was simply much, much to light plus strange color shifts. simply pulling the curves up did not work - the "right" profile solved the issue...
I used both Spectrophotometer's, the final profile for Epson was done using the Barbieri which is quite cool.
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hi everyone,
.....................................
.......................
after researching the current media for our HP Z6100 printers with the current Virvera inks we have had to acknowledge that pretty much the only campatible
regarding shaddows and really, really dark tones - no problem with the vivera inks on the media. Black as black can get.......................................
regards,
lorenz
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=166591\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Thanks Lorenz, really useful
Ric
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The Hp Premium Backlit film is only available on 36" and up by the look of things- does anyone know if their are 24" alternatives?
Thanks
Ric
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Try Lexjet or IJ Technologies.
Also, when using pigment ink, use front print backlit film. Dye inks are better suited for reverse print backlit film.
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@Ric
rumors are that arkwright is the OEM for hp on this particular media... :-)
take a look at www.arkright.com and look for 566.50 in the aquaous section.
please note that there seems to be a deal between hp and arkwright on the media weight. the arkwright media is slightly thinner which will ultimately lead to a whatsoever lower price :-).
the media is avail in 24 inches - so you should give it a try...
we are currently crosschecking the media in house for our purposes.
bye,
lorenz
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thats www.arkwright.com
Bill
@Ric
rumors are that arkwright is the OEM for hp on this particular media... :-)
take a look at www.arkright.com and look for 566.50 in the aquaous section.
please note that there seems to be a deal between hp and arkwright on the media weight. the arkwright media is slightly thinner which will ultimately lead to a whatsoever lower price :-).
the media is avail in 24 inches - so you should give it a try...
we are currently crosschecking the media in house for our purposes.
bye,
lorenz
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167779\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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thats www.arkwright.com
Bill
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167892\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Thanks- I'll take a look!
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Wow, great discussion. Perhaps we can revive it a bit?
(Background: I have the Epson 7900 and their DisplayTrans Backlight Media)
Lorenz: Did you ever find out whether Arkwright's 566.50 film was the same as HP's, as suspected?
Andy/Digitaldog: I picked up the "Epson DisplayTrans Backlight Media". Is that the film you profiled for Epson on the 7880? You created the 7880 Backlit profile for Epson, I don't suppose you know who created the profile for the 7900 published on Epson's Support site (link below)? Considering the fact you profiled the film for Epson, do you have any knowledge-gem's on how to massage the best print out of the film?
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support...tform=Macintosh (http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=119097&prodoid=63079721&infoType=Downloads&platform=Macintosh)
EDITED:
I've printed pairs (one with their ICC, the other with color management off) of test prints (granger + gamut charts, 21-step wedge, various gradients). I've only gotten good prints at 2880. Printing on the 1440 setting yields very strange results in the darker areas of all the test prints where it looks like smearing or ink mixing along the printhead movement-axis.
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I heard Kodak backlit film was good with the 3100.
I can imagine the Epson would be at least as good or better since it is specced for more recent inks.
Just a note on the OEM making the media: they are specified by the customer in most cases and are optimised for the clients needs. Just because the OEM maker has a listing that is similar does not at all mean it is the same. This is not to say it doesn't work , just that more often than not, the optimised OEM branded media just work a little or a lot better.
The Z printers obviously cannot profile in a transmissive mode. Maybe taping the film to a backing will fetch some type of result if it is tricked into thinking it is just a normal print.
I just looked at the profile supplied for HP 3200 backlit material. It looks to be a standard ICC profile with some radical curves inside it probably to control inking. I suppose how you have to correlate the profile must be to a known light source at a specified intensity otherwise how could it be made?
Still wondering if the imaging on these inkjet materials are similar to duratrans ?
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I can imagine the Epson would be at least as good or better since it is specced for more recent inks.
I have identical prints from the Z3100 w/ their HP Premium Vivid Color Backlit and the 7900 w/ Epson's DisplayTrans. They look almost identical when backlit. However, the big deal for me was what Lorenz said earlier in this thread: the HP Premium Vivid Color Backlit looks equally good frontlit as a normal print (the Epson is noticeably darker).
Does anyone here have a profile for the HP Prem Vivid Color Backlit on the Epson 7900/9900? I'd be curious if it works as well as it does on HP's printers.
Just a note on the OEM making the media: they are specified by the customer in most cases and are optimised for the clients needs. Just because the OEM maker has a listing that is similar does not at all mean it is the same. This is not to say it doesn't work , just that more often than not, the optimised OEM branded media just work a little or a lot better.
Good to know, thanks!
The Z printers obviously cannot profile in a transmissive mode. Maybe taping the film to a backing will fetch some type of result if it is tricked into thinking it is just a normal print.
I just looked at the profile supplied for HP 3200 backlit material. It looks to be a standard ICC profile with some radical curves inside it probably to control inking. I suppose how you have to correlate the profile must be to a known light source at a specified intensity otherwise how could it be made?
Still wondering if the imaging on these inkjet materials are similar to duratrans ?
It was said earlier that profiling the film as reflective won't give a good profile. Too dark and color shifts and so on.
With an Eye-One how can one measure emissive colors that aren't on a monitor? Is it possible to lay a profiling test chart on the lightbox and measure the colors based on the lightbox?
Maybe someone has a work-around, here was my failed attempt: I printed one of Bill Atkinson's profiles on the Epson DisplayTrans Backlit film. Then I dropped the reference file in the monitor folder in MeasureTool's folder. Then I loaded MeasureTool and setup the Eye-One for "Emission". The chart loads fine, but when I get to measuring it, it gives me an error (of course, because the monitor wants to display the color on the screen).
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The Z printers obviously cannot profile in a transmissive mode. Maybe taping the film to a backing will fetch some type of result if it is tricked into thinking it is just a normal print.
I just looked at the profile supplied for HP 3200 backlit material. It looks to be a standard ICC profile with some radical curves inside it probably to control inking. I suppose how you have to correlate the profile must be to a known light source at a specified intensity otherwise how could it be made?
I doubt one can do that job with any normal spectrometer in its reflective reading mode. The dynamic range of back lit on a light box is extreme compared to reflective prints. A transmissive densito meter + calibrated light box and patch reading is probably used for that kind of jobs. But some normal spectrometers can be used for monitor calibration and profiling. With similar dynamic ranges. The difference is that the backlit film is printed CMYKetc subtractive and the monitor RGB additive. Looks like a hacker's job: reading patches of a backlit target on a freshly calibrated monitor (say 5000K) with a spectrometer + adapted software. Another ArgyllCMS project.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/ (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/)
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To answer you both: yes I know that printing a would be transparent chart and reading it as a positive reflective is going to be much different than a true transmissive read chart.
That is not to say it has not been done before. Some users have done just that if you search on the Colorsync users group over the years with varying degrees of success. Not many people have a transmissive spectro. I thought about getting one in the days of outputting to Lightjet 2080 film recorders but I'm glad I didn't. At least they are much cheaper than a spheric spectro for laminated surfaces!
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To answer you both: yes I know that printing a would be transparent chart and reading it as a positive reflective is going to be much different than a true transmissive read chart.
That is not to say it has not been done before. Some users have done just that if you search on the Colorsync users group over the years with varying degrees of success. Not many people have a transmissive spectro. I thought about getting one in the days of outputting to Lightjet 2080 film recorders but I'm glad I didn't. At least they are much cheaper than a spheric spectro for laminated surfaces!
Have you given it a shot? The question I'd ask is: do you think the transmissive-read profile you'd create would be any better than the one HP would produce?
Post your findings if you give it a whack.
I'm still curious if anyone has a workaround to create an emissive-generated ICC with an Eye-One, a lightbox, and printed targets. That's the solution I am focusing my energy on (until someone tells me it's a waste of time).
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Have you given it a shot? The question I'd ask is: do you think the transmissive-read profile you'd create would be any better than the one HP would produce?
Post your findings if you give it a whack.
I'm still curious if anyone has a workaround to create an emissive-generated ICC with an Eye-One, a lightbox, and printed targets. That's the solution I am focusing my energy on (until someone tells me it's a waste of time).
I do have a few sheets of transparent material but too small to profile.
IF you make a light box to profile you can set a 3200 K tungsten source under a frosted plexi, , measure the white of the light with i1 Share, then use this in Profile Maker as a source light. Fluorescent tubes have too many peaks to make the sample points correlate.
If I remember right HP have Spectrolino T tables for making profiles. Will a home brew be better? Probably not.
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IF you make a light box to profile you can set a 3200 K tungsten source under a frosted plexi, , measure the white of the light with i1 Share, then use this in Profile Maker as a source light. Fluorescent tubes have too many peaks to make the sample points correlate.
Thanks for the info, Neil. So once I've measured the light source white point thru the plexi, how would I trick the Eye-One software to let me scan the patches without the puck lighting them as if they were reflective?
Perhaps someone can fill me in on ProfileMaker's functionality: is it possible to scan an emissive target with a reference file? The Eye-One MeasureTool only seems to allow me to use the emissive function to calibrate the monitor.
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Thanks for the info, Neil. So once I've measured the light source white point thru the plexi, how would I trick the Eye-One software to let me scan the patches without the puck lighting them as if they were reflective?
Perhaps someone can fill me in on ProfileMaker's functionality: is it possible to scan an emissive target with a reference file? The Eye-One MeasureTool only seems to allow me to use the emissive function to calibrate the monitor.
What if you used the Profile Maker Measure tool, in demo mode, measured each patch in a transmissive mode, then massaged the data to fit the chart structure (see sample reference charts) . Now , how you build an output referred transmissive chart from i1 Match > not sure you can do this. An input chart would have to be for an IT8 / but that is not the direction you want. You need to send a set of numbers to be output , read the colours ( T- mode) that are produced, then create a profile that describes these numbers producing the measured colours on the device.
Perhaps it is just easiest to use Measure Tool and send the file to someone who has ProfileMaker the txt file for profile creation. You should still measure the light source and use that as your light source in Measure Tool coming from i1 Share or measure Tool itself.
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Thanks for the info, Neil. So once I've measured the light source white point thru the plexi, how would I trick the Eye-One software to let me scan the patches without the puck lighting them as if they were reflective?
Perhaps someone can fill me in on ProfileMaker's functionality: is it possible to scan an emissive target with a reference file? The Eye-One MeasureTool only seems to allow me to use the emissive function to calibrate the monitor.
What if you used the Profile Maker Measure tool, in demo mode, measured each patch in a transmissive mode, then massaged the data to fit the chart structure (see sample reference charts) . Now , how you build an output referred transmissive chart from i1 Match > not sure you can do this. An input chart would have to be for an IT8 / but that is not the direction you want. You need to send a set of numbers to be output , read the colours ( T- mode) that are produced, then create a profile that describes these numbers producing the measured colours on the device.
Perhaps it is just easiest to use Measure Tool and send the file to someone who has ProfileMaker the txt file for profile creation. You should still measure the light source and use that as your light source in Measure Tool coming from i1 Share or measure Tool itself.