Less than perfect paper profiles

[Larry Heath]

I need a bit of help/advise. I seem to have occasional issues getting tonal separation in my initial prints on certain (new) media, some canvas and smooth art papers, primarily in the shadow areas.

As an example, I tried a sample roll of Breathing Color’s Metallic canvas. Using PhotoMunki I build a paper profile for my 9880, all well and good. Now I print a test image and the shadows have muddy dull colors with decrease tonal separation, same image on sunset select glossy is as near to perfect as one could want, as far as monitor to print goes. Now I am aware that I can feed PhotoMunki this file and enhance the outcome, but my question is why the initial paper profile seems quite so far off the mark, at least in the shadows, between monitor and paper? I’d like to evaluate a canvas or paper more cost and time effectively. No, I haven't tried BC's caned profile, yet.

Further I have been contemplating moving from the PhotoMunki Photo to the i1 Photo 2 system for color management, for a while. I am wondering if the increased patch count might help in this regard getting a more usable paper profile quicker.

So the work flow is this:

Shoot in RAW (Nef)

Import into LR, color space is ProPhoto, with majority of manipulations done here and viewed on Dell 3014 which is periodically profiled using PhotoMunki. Monitor brightness is set to 80 cd/ft^2.

Transfer copy with LR adjustment to PS 6 for any other manipulations and to soft-proof/gamut check with paper profile I intend to print with, making any small adjustments.

Save as PSD file and print with PS 6 and associated profile making sure all associated printer settings are set as when profile was built and PS controls color and printer does not. 

All prints are evaluated under my standard daylight viewing conditions.

So any thoughts as to what may be happening?

Later Larry

[digitaldog]

I'd play with the media settings and ink control first before building the profiles. Lay down too much ink density, the profile isn’t going to fix that issue.
This test file (use without color management) may help:
digitaldog.net/files/InkDensity.zip

[pfigen]

Here are a couple 3-D gamut plots that might help explain things as well. The Breathing Color profile on their site is labeled (-15), and I didn't spend any time there reading, but I'm assuming that means a minus 15 percent ink density setting in the Epson driver. That alone could cause a huge problem if you have too much ink being layer down, which might also be compounded if the ColorMunki can't see into the shadows as well as other instruments.

The first gamut plot shows the BC vs ProPhoto, and the difference is huge, so if you've got a lot of information, especially dark information outside of your printer gamut, that can and will cause issues. The second compares the Breathing Color to the Lexjet, with profiles from each respective company, and the Lexjet definitely has a larger gamut all around. Whether it's a big enough difference to make a difference is hard to tell, but if you're on the edge, then it might.

[Rhossydd]

The first gamut plot shows the BC vs ProPhoto, and the difference is huge, so if you've got a lot of information, especially dark information outside of your printer gamut, that can and will cause issues.

If the concern is matching a print to the screen image, that isn't a very useful comparison.
More useful is to compare monitor profile against printer profile to see where things could be going awry. Most easily done on an image by image basis with Lightroom 5's soft proofing option. There you'll see where there are any colour ranges that aren't within gamut of either device.

The OP's original problem is best addressed by Andrew's suggestion of taking some extra care to ensure that there are no over inking issues first before profiling. A better spectro may also help, but addressing optimum mechanical print quality will still need to be done first.

[Robert Ardill]

I need a bit of help/advise. I seem to have occasional issues getting tonal separation in my initial prints on certain (new) media, some canvas and smooth art papers, primarily in the shadow areas.

As an example, I tried a sample roll of Breathing Color’s Metallic canvas. Using PhotoMunki I build a paper profile for my 9880, all well and good. Now I print a test image and the shadows have muddy dull colors with decrease tonal separation, same image on sunset select glossy is as near to perfect as one could want, as far as monitor to print goes. Now I am aware that I can feed PhotoMunki this file and enhance the outcome, but my question is why the initial paper profile seems quite so far off the mark, at least in the shadows, between monitor and paper? I’d like to evaluate a canvas or paper more cost and time effectively. No, I haven't tried BC's caned profile, yet.

I would be interested to see your PM profile and the BC canned profile.  Could you make this available to us?

Robert