Hot Press Natural profile and Epson P800

[robgo2]

I have a friend who has a new P800 and prints from Lightroom. The problem is that colors are way off using Epson's own profile for Hot Press Natural. In particular, blue skies are decidedly violet are very far from what is seen on the display with soft proofing. Any thoughts on this? Is the profile bad, or could it be a mistake in how the printer is set up? Of note, colors are perfect with Canson Platine.

Thanks,
Rob

[howardm]

Andrew Rodney has shown multiple times that some of the Epson made (made in Japan that is) profiles are fairly terrible whereas the Epson USA are better.  Have your friend print out his Printer Gamut image, and check the blue balls 

I'm not assuring that that is the problem but rather it kind of fits your description. 

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3928092

[Mark D Segal]

Please refer your friend to my review of the P800 using Epson Hot Press Natural paper and the profile for that paper contained within the Epson driver that installs with the installation of the printer. The profile works well and the quality of the blue skies is fine. It is possible that something is wrong with his set-up in the Epson driver or in the Lightroom print panel (for example, the most obvious: does he have the correct Epson paper selected, and is Printer Color Management turned OFF in the driver?). Less likely, he has a nozzle clog or issue to similar effect preventing a necessary colour or two from laying down correctly. He should also try printing from Photoshop to see whether there is any difference - after carefully checking the settings in both the driver and the application.

[robgo2]

Well, my friend and I decided to follow Ctein's recommendation on Luminous Landscape to use "printer manages color," and guess what? The color is much improved, though it is still not an exact match of what is seen on the monitor. The monitor, BTW, is an old Apple 23 inch Cinema Display, which has a narrow color gamut. Perhaps that is the limiting factor in trying to perform accurate soft proofing in the ProPhoto color space.

Rob

[Mark D Segal]

Could also depend on how you profiled the monitor - selected calibration parameters (luminance, white point etc.) and quality of monitor profiling software. The monitor colour gamut may not be an important issue. In any event, you should not need to depend on <Printer Manages Color> to get very good results (though it does show that the Epson profile is OK, because it is most likely using the profile in the driver). This option may be workable, but doesn't answer why a colour-managed workflow isn't performing correctly for you. If you move off of Epson paper, you will need this.

[robgo2]

The monitor is properly calibrated, and the printer is correctly setup for the media type. Also, the fact that the Canson Platine profile works so well suggests to me that the problem may lie with the Epson HPB profile, which seems odd since both the paper and the printer are from the same manufacturer.

[hugowolf]

... the problem may lie with the Epson HPB profile, which seems odd since both the paper and the printer are from the same manufacturer.

Epson do not make paper. All four of the hot and cold pressed papers are source in Italy. And the profile, who knows from where it came, but if it is Epson Japan, then there have been a number not-so-good profiles from there.

Brian A

[robgo2]

Epson do not make paper. All four of the hot and cold pressed papers are source in Italy. And the profile, who knows from where it came, but if it is Epson Japan, then there have been a number not-so-good profiles from there.

Brian A

I know that Epson does not actually make paper, but if the box has Epson's name on it, then presumably they take responsibility for its quality, which in the case of the Hot and Cold Press papers, is excellent. The profiles may be a different story, but one would assume that Epson wants them to be of comparable quality in order to please users. Satisfied customers usually come back for more.

Rob

[digitaldog]

Well, my friend and I decided to follow Ctein's recommendation on Luminous Landscape to use "printer manages color," and guess what? The color is much improved, though it is still not an exact match of what is seen on the monitor.

It can't, there's no color management going on using that print mode to use for soft proofing.

[Chris Kern]

I'm far from an expert—I only recently started making my own prints after using a commercial lab for several years—but I've had no difficulty soft-proofing Hot Press Natural using the Epson profile, a P800 and NEC wide-gamut monitors calibrated with NEC's SpectraViewII when printing from Lightroom.  Actually, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it was go do.  Often the only modification I need to make to the proof copy is to add some "Clarity" or diddle the tone-curve slightly, as Jeff Schewe suggests in his book—and that is to punch up the image a bit to compensate for the fact that the paper has less dynamic range than the monitor, rather than to get the colors to look right.  It sounds to me as though your friend may have either a color-management problem or some sort of printer defect.