Issues with creating printer profile for canvas

[Anil Kalagatla]

I've been trying to create custom printer profile for my printer (Epson 9800) and canvas (Fredrix) combo using ColorMunki Photo and I keep having issues with the blacks.  I attached a crop of a soft proof of a photo showing hair - as you can see it's completely blotchy.  This is my third attempt at creating a profile and I was careful to make sure I chose "No Color Adjustment" when printing the swatches.

Any ideas on what might be happening?

Thanks
Anil

[huguito]

When do you softproof this image, before sending it to the printer, turn the gamut warnings on.
If the areas are out of gamut you will see blotching like that.
If the area is out of gamut play with the color hue and saturation to wrestle it back in gamut, try both rendering intents also.
If you don't see anything out of gamut try lowering the ink density and test print only the problem area to avoid wasting lot of ink and canvas.
Hope it helps

Hugo

[Anil Kalagatla]

Interestingly, when I enable gamut warnings, these areas are *not* shown as being out of gamut.  Can you clarify what you mean by lowering the ink density?

Looking at the soft proof (and one of the earlier prints), this is the only region that seems to be horribly bad, the other colors (like the skin tones) seem pretty good.

Anil

When do you softproof this image, before sending it to the printer, turn the gamut warnings on.
If the areas are out of gamut you will see blotching like that.
If the area is out of gamut play with the color hue and saturation to wrestle it back in gamut, try both rendering intents also.
If you don't see anything out of gamut try lowering the ink density and test print only the problem area to avoid wasting lot of ink and canvas.
Hope it helps

Hugo

[huguito]

When you go to the print menu, open print settings, you will find a drop down menu named paper settings.
one of the items you can dial is Print Density or Ink density, you can dial lower than 0, I find that lowering the ink density 10% or 15% sometimes cure blotching or ink pooling
I am printing from a Mac on a 9600, your menus could look a bit different

[Ernst Dinkla]

I can not recall having seen any gamut warnings in grey/black areas, ever :-) It is about chroma, not density.

Do you create the profile after the varnish is applied on the target? Or is there no varnish applied in the end product? I am not familiar with the canvas used. Is that a matte canvas which requires varnish or a glossy satin that may not need it? This is not a case of gloss differences, even a mismatch of MK black where PK black for gloss should be used? Set the right and same media preset for both the target printing and the end product?

It could be that the Color Munki does not measure well within the darkest patches and the rougher texture of canvas creates its won abnormalities with our spectrometers.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[Anil Kalagatla]

I can not recall having seen any gamut warnings in grey/black areas, ever :-) It is about chroma, not density.

That makes sense, now that I think about it :-)

Do you create the profile after the varnish is applied on the target? Or is there no varnish applied in the end product? I am not familiar with the canvas used. Is that a matte canvas which requires varnish or a glossy satin that may not need it? This is not a case of gloss differences, even a mismatch of MK black where PK black for gloss should be used? Set the right and same media preset for both the target printing and the end product?

It could be that the Color Munki does not measure well within the darkest patches and the rougher texture of canvas creates its won abnormalities with our spectrometers.

For this test, I was not using Varnish and using Matte black ink.  Given that the colors seem to be generally correct (except for some gamut warnings in the pink), I wonder if it's indeed an issue with the darkest patches on canvas.  I will try profiling Epson Enhanced Matte paper and see if I run into similar issues.

Anil

[Ernst Dinkla]

For this test, I was not using Varnish and using Matte black ink.  Given that the colors seem to be generally correct (except for some gamut warnings in the pink), I wonder if it's indeed an issue with the darkest patches on canvas.  I will try profiling Epson Enhanced Matte paper and see if I run into similar issues.

On matte surfaces the ColorMunki should be able to measure the blacks Dmax correctly, even on the canvas texture I think. It might be more difficult on the varnished canvas but that is however the right method if the canvas end product gets a varnish. The ColorMunki software uses less target patches I think and an iterative additional measurement to refine the first readings. This may be the cause of your problem, iterative is fine when the measurements are absolutely repeatable, on the canvas texture that condition is hard to achieve. More patches and averaging the measurements probably will work better. The ColorMunki software may not have that, you can check ArgyllCMS as an alternative. Shareware more or less.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots