Amazing Breakthrough - HP Z3200ps 6000 Patch Target ICC Profile

[deanwork]

That is a very good point. The profiling capability of the Z may just be getting started thanks to these guys. I'm very interested in what can be done, with these auto measured big targets. There are so many things this printer can do and HP never marketed it. Their sales-tech guys are MIA.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the Z doesn't produce more repeatable measurements than the Isis as good as the Isis is. The Isis has wheels every 21mm to grab and feed the paper and it changes slightly the spectro readings and leaves visible tracks depending on the paper type.

I'm actually quite curious about whether the Z has less variance compared to the Isis.

[MHMG]

...Why a more stable magenta has not been formulated for k7 neutral I will never know...

Probably because it's not common knowledge that there's a color shift fading issue due to the addition of a less light fast magenta pigment blended in with the carbon pigment to achieve the colder toned Piezography ink sets.

That said, the Piezography neutral shade lightfastness issues pale in comparison to all the "archival pigment print" nonsense being played out in art galleries all around the world nowadays. Take any pigment inkjet printer, use any media you want, loaded with OBAs or not, and call it an "archival pigment print". Market resistance now apparently resolved. "Archival pigment" appears to be an incredibly reassuring combination of words to the buyer even though there is no formal definition for what it means!

[Mark Lindquist]

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the Z doesn't produce more repeatable measurements than the Isis as good as the Isis is. The Isis has wheels every 21mm to grab and feed the paper and it changes slightly the spectro readings and leaves visible tracks depending on the paper type.

I'm actually quite curious about whether the Z has less variance compared to the Isis.

I wouldn't count on it Doug.  Referring to Geraldos thread, Samuel Johnchia had this to say:

Hi Geraldo,

Thank you for the information. I assume that the first reading pass was after sufficient dry down time, not right after the chart was printed? Then the several hours between readings should not matter enough. It would be good to know that the dE differences is almost entirely due to the instrument's limitation, and we are not looking at dry down changing the dE also.

Otherwise the repeatability is about the same as what one can get with careful hand scanning with the i1 Pro II, in my tests. The repeatability is limited by the measuring device in this case - the same i1 Pro base technology. However it is less likely for the automated Z3200 system to make errors due to hand slippage or inconsistent or too fast/slow movement, so human error is minimized. Occasionally I catch an error of about 1 dE2000 when hand scanning in the past. Sometimes a freak accident is much worse. It was good to see confirmation from Damir that it is possible to hack the software to scan any number of patches. If I had a Z3200 and no iSis I would use it for scanning too.

The iSis repeatability is on a whole different level. Here is a comparison of scanning a (more challenging) 2808 patch target. The max dE difference is more than an order of magnitude better and the same could almost be said of the average dE:

Number of Samples: 2808

Delta-E Formula dE2000

Overall - (2808 colors)
--------------------------------------------------
Average dE:   0.01
    Max dE:   0.03
    Min dE:   0.00
 StdDev dE:   0.00

Best 90% - (2526 colors)
--------------------------------------------------
Average dE:   0.01
    Max dE:   0.01
    Min dE:   0.00
 StdDev dE:   0.00

Worst 10% - (282 colors)
--------------------------------------------------
Average dE:   0.02
    Max dE:   0.03
    Min dE:   0.01
 StdDev dE:   0.00

If you go back to that thread, there's a lot of info re: what the Z3200ps can do, as Geraldo made several tests:

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=114961.msg948233#msg948233

The HP Z3200ps is really good at what it does, but it's not an i1Sis the larger of the two of which costs more than the entire Z3200ps INCLUDING the spectrophotometer.  It's important to acknowledge that what it does is indeed awesome, but not overstate what it is, I think.
Pushing it to it's very edge and it's limits will tell, but it's simply an embedded spectrophotometer that produces at this point in my mind world class results.  That's plenty good for me, and for the money, it is absolutely incredible.  Geraldo went on to clarify what the Z could do under careful scrutiny and that's worth looking at.  Have to say thanks again to Geraldo for taking us down this path.


Best,

Mark

[deanwork]

You got that right. I may be setting up the neutrals in a 24 inch printer just because I miss them so much. If they are all n limited edition portfolios or exhibited frequently they could last a generation or more. Just wish they had the Epson magenta mixed in instead of what the have.

I realized a way to convey the "dimensionality" aspect I was describing, it is like Leonardo's glazes in oil painting, a gradual process of building up of tonality lighter lighter lighter  that wraps around lit objects. Jon deserves a lot of credit for being able to move it that far. As for modern Ilford silver prints , they look dead to me compared to what we used to do with more silver in those old papers. If you make your own silver chloride paper you could it though I assume and print from digital negs....

Probably because it's not common knowledge that there's a color shift fading issue due to the addition of a less light fast magenta pigment blended in with the carbon pigment to achieve the colder toned Piezography ink sets.

That said, the Piezography neutral shade lightfastness issues pale in comparison to all the "archival pigment print" nonsense being played out in art galleries all around the world nowadays. Take any pigment inkjet printer, use any media you want, loaded with OBAs or not, and call it an "archival pigment print". Market resistance now apparently resolved. "Archival pigment" appears to be an incredibly reassuring combination of words to the buyer even though there is no formal definition for what it means!

[mscherlacher]

I'd like to thank all of you involved in working out this new profiling solution. I've been following along (the best I could) from the beginning of Brad's post. I'm new to the Z and so far have been very happy with it's output with the exception of the B&W linearity.
It wasn't a problem for the majority of my work but I have a few "tough" images that were showing stepping. Thanks to you all, problem solved! I printed a 2033 patch target and ran it through Argyll CMS, worked like a dream. I'll be donating soon!!!

Just a few things I found that may be specific to my set up but maybe not. When printing or scanning a target patch, don't let your computer go to sleep. It breaks communication between Utility and the printer and in my case could not get it reestablished. In fact it caused
a Runtime error and I had to reboot the printer to start the process over. Because of my all too short attention span I did this twice (I then remembered to turn off sleep).

One more thing I discovered. I've been running a Canon for years and it would always stop printing when I was stupid enough to try to print a job without enough left on the roll. The Z did not and made a mess of itself.  Is this normal? Do I have a problem with my printer?  I know I should pay closer attention but really thought I had enough paper to complete the job. I may have been a bit too exited make the profile as well.

Once again, thank you all so much. I would not have figured this out on my own. I am now making the best prints I've ever made, at least to my eye. This was like an early Christmas present!

Mike

[Mark Lindquist]

Mike - in many cases, if the paper is at the end of the roll, it is glued on and can't let go.  In that case, the printer may continue printing on the same line until the print is done.  So if it has run out of paper and just kept printing in thin air, I wouldn't know what to say.  Best thing to do is clean it up the best you can and keep printing.  You should be fine.

Glad to hear you're liking your Z and making great prints.  This should be the beginning of a great partnership with that printer.

Best,

Mark

*EDIT - By the way, you should always create the paper, profile it and do advance paper calibration.  It's a good idea to do this because once in the printer's list of custom papers, it will remind you when to do re-calibrations.  Also, it keeps everything organized and tidy.  But as you saw, it can be done otherwise as well - it's just that the Z does such a good job of organizing, why would you not want to let it do it?

[mscherlacher]

Mike - in many cases, if the paper is at the end of the roll, it is glued on and can't let go.  In that case, the printer may continue printing on the same line until the print is done.

  Yeah, this is exactly what happened. I made the mess when I removed the paper - some of the ink on that way over printed line got on the rollers.  The 6300 would cancel the job when it felt the resistance of the taped roll.
 
As far as this being the beginning of a great partnership, I agree. I only wish I went this route years ago. Thanks again Mark for all your effort you put into the Z website, it's such a great resource.

*EDIT - By the way, you should always create the paper, profile it and do advance paper calibration.  It's a good idea to do this because once in the printer's list of custom papers, it will remind you when to do re-calibrations.  Also, it keeps everything organized and tidy.  But as you saw, it can be done otherwise as well - it's just that the Z does such a good job of organizing, why would you not want to let it do it?

   
This is exactly what I'm doing Mark and I agree it's a great system. What did I say to make you think otherwise?

I'm looking forward to hear Mark's (MHMG) analysis of the different patch counts. I went with 2033 because it had the extended grays and I like the number. I'm not all that scientific   I would like to know at what number the patch counts start to yield little improvement, if that's even the case. I do know that I'm really happy with what I got out of 2033.

[Mark Lindquist]

As far as this being the beginning of a great partnership, I agree. I only wish I went this route years ago. Thanks again Mark for all your effort you put into the Z website, it's such a great resource.

   
This is exactly what I'm doing Mark and I agree it's a great system. What did I say to make you think otherwise?

. I may have been a bit too exited make the profile as well.

See above Mike - I may have misunderestood you.  Anyway, all is good - thanks for the kind words.

We’ll be sure to post results.

Mark

[Brad P]

Hey Mark, here's something that could be helpful.  From the old post.  Didn't want to clog up the new one.

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=121939.msg1016004#new

[Mark Lindquist]

Hey Mark, here's something that could be helpful.  From the old post.  Didn't want to clog up the new one.

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=121939.msg1016004#new

Hi Brad,  just to confirm, yes this the exact work flow MHMG and I have been discussing and Mark MHMG has been working on.  So yes, you have the correct work around.

As far as adding the patch target size file in under the list, clicking the “+” sign is the correct method, and then using the drop-down menu, the new target will show up.  Install profile is the way to go, as Geraldo pointed out in the original thread in order to get the newly generated /ICC file included in the custom paper list.  Thanks for listing the steps.  We’ve been doing this, but haven’t posted it yet, wanting to finalize our test results.  I ran into a glitch with the Windows HP Utility, where although it would print and measure the 44” wide 6000 patch target, it failed to print and measure the 4357 target on 24” Wide Moab Entrada.
After much screwing around, I put a 6 ft. Long table in behing the printer, cut the roll into a sheet that was about 5+ feet, and using load paper with sckew check, was able to get the spectro to read the chart using the very same workflow of “measure a previously printed chart”.  MHMG is testing the buginess of printing tiff files with Apple Color Sync, etc., and we are continuing to carefully plod through various iterations until we know for sure what bugs are and aren’t in both the Mac and Windows HP Utilities before publishing the results.  Your list of steps will come in handy when we do come to that point.  Very good. It also confirms our results.

Mark