My experience with L.Type

[mearussi]

If I drive a car on the road where the speed limit is 75 mph, and the common sense tells me that anything above 90-100 mph is seriously asking for trouble, do I really care that there are cars that can do 200-300 mph?

In other words, how many real-life pictures fall outside of the narrower range of the L-Type prints? And if they do fall outside (and I have no doubt that Andrew is going to come up with some examples), how much the end result would be unacceptable? I have printed images that fall completely outside the gamut, yet the end result still looks very nice.

Everything is a trade off. If you don't mind selling an image that will fade in 40 years or less (possibly much less if it's in a well lit office environment) that's your choice (did you tell your customer?). And certainly if it's for personal use then who cares? And if you also don't care if you're extracting all the possible color nuances out of your original file then fine. But for those of us who do, type C is a non-starter. 

I understand the desire for a unique look. Cibachrome was very difficult to print correctly and few mastered it. But even when printed by amateurs it could still look beautiful. I think metallic prints are beautiful even though they also have a limited display life (60 years) and gamut compared to inkjet, but for some images the trade off is worth it. I've never seen a L.Type print and if you value their unique look enough to put up with their limitations then again that's your choice. And if the price is competitive with inkjet then it might be something to consider.

[digitaldog]

Thanks for the comparison.
My take on this (and not meant in an argumentative way) is that in both cases the image colors fall way out of gamut for both printers, slightly less so for the inkjet.

My take too.

not which media is least out of gamut in the blues, but rather which one has the most attractive palette of Gamut-Failure-Blues.

And as I suggested a lot earlier, one would need to print to both devices and LOOK at them. Otherwise again, it's one hand clapping.
Note, the quality of the profile, the rendering intent selected (IF you can even pick that with this Type L provider) will play a role. So here's yet another possible advantage to Ink Jet, certainly if you have the printer: when sending data to the print provider, do you have the option to use their supplied (if supplied) ICC profile to convert the image to the output color space with the Rendering Intent you prefer and with output specific edits in that output color space?
This all boils down again to having someone here on LuLa take many images, I'd suggest your blue building as well as the color reference images discussed, print them to Type L on say Luster and on a modern $800 desktop inkjet on Luster too. Then have a few people such as yourself examine the prints and comment.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Andrew, I think I get what you are trying to say: "It might look nice to you, but only because you do not know what you are missing." And you are probably be right, especially when we are comparing ProPhoto RGB and sRGB. However, since no printer, as far as I know, approaches ProPhoto RGB gamut, the difference between two printers, while still existing, is not that huge anymore, at least not visually.

[digitaldog]

Andrew, I think I get what you are trying to say: "It might look nice to you, but only because you do not know what you are missing." And you are probably be right, especially when we are comparing ProPhoto RGB and sRGB. However, since no printer, as far as I know, approaches ProPhoto RGB gamut, the difference between two printers, while still existing, is not that huge anymore, at least not visually.

No printer can print all of sRGB. So the idea one working space can or cannot be printed is moot from that point on. Using your image, sRGB would clip a massive amount of colors that ProPhoto RGB would not. But there's more and sorry for the copy and paste but "we" have discussed this before but maybe not all readers here saw it:

Simple matrix profiles of RGB working spaces when plotted 3 dimensionally illustrate that they reach their maximum saturation at high luminance levels. The opposite is seen with print (output) color spaces. Printers produce color by adding ink or some colorant, while working space profiles are based on building more saturation by adding more light due to the differences in subtractive and additive color models. To counter this, you need a really big RGB working space like ProPhoto RGB again due to the simple size and to fit the round peg in the bigger square hole. RGB working spaces have shapes which are simple and predictable and differ greatly from output color spaces. Then there is the issue of very dark colors of intense saturation which do occur in nature and we can capture with many devices. Many of these colors fall outside Adobe RGB (1998) and when you encode into such a color space or smaller gamut, you clip the colors to the degree that smooth gradations become solid blobs in print, again due to the dissimilar shapes and differences in how the two spaces relate to luminance. So the advantage of ProPhoto RGB isn't only about retaining all those out-of-gamut colors it's also about maintaining the dissimilarities between them, so that you can map them into a printable color space as gradations rather than ending up as blobs. 


Here is a link to a TIFF that I built to show the effect of the 'blobs' and lack of definition of dark but saturated colors using sRGB (Red dots) versus the same image in ProPhoto RGB (Green dots). The image was synthetic, a Granger Rainbow which contains a huge number of possible colors. You can see that the gamut of ProPhoto RGB is larger as expected. But notice the clumping of the colored red vs. green dots in darker tones which are lower down in the plot. Both RGB working space were converted to a final output printer color space (Epson 3880 Luster).

http://www.digitaldog.net/files/sRGBvsPro3DPlot_Granger.tif

Back from the paste, examine now the gamut plots of the Type L and the Epson with your building and look at the height of the two (from Lstar 0 to 100); they are not equal and this suggests another advantage to the ink jet. But better would be simply making a print on each and viewing both together under a good viewing booth.

[mearussi]

Andrew, I think I get what you are trying to say: "It might look nice to you, but only because you do not know what you are missing." And you are probably be right, especially when we are comparing ProPhoto RGB and sRGB. However, since no printer, as far as I know, approaches ProPhoto RGB gamut, the difference between two printers, while still existing, is not that huge anymore, at least not visually.

It's not huge but it does exist. I was curious about how much of a difference in a print there was between Adobe RGB vs ProPhoto RGB so I took the same raw file and converted it to both and then printed it on my Epson 4800. The image was of a red highly saturated flower and there was a slight increase in the red saturation in the ProPhoto file, enough for me to drop Adobe RGB altogether for all my future photos.  So it really just depends on how fussy you are.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... I've never seen a L.Type print and if you value their unique look enough to put up with their limitations then again that's your choice...

I have seen them, with Kevin's images printed, but I have not tried them myself. I also have not seen two printouts of the same image next to each other, one on inkjet, the other on C-type. My inkjet printer (Canon Pixma PRO-10) is still in storage after the last move, as well as prints from it, so can't really compare anything anytime soon.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Andrew, if I understand correctly you post #23 above, you are saying that, ideally, one should print from ProPhoto RGB to the printer space, if possible. Which is something we routinely do when printing on our home inkjets via, say, Lightroom. A lot of labs insist on sending them sRGB files, however. What you are saying is that any lab that would accept ProPhoto RGB and print from it, converting to their printer's space, would produce a better print, with smoother tonal and color gradations. Am I correct?

[digitaldog]

Andrew, if I understand correctly you post #23 above, you are saying that, ideally, one should print from ProPhoto RGB to the printer space, if possible.

I've addressed all this here and suggest those who have an interest do their own testing and come to their own conclusions:

The benefits of wide gamut working spaces on printed output

This three part, 32 minute video covers why a wide gamut RGB working space like ProPhoto RGB can produce superior quality output to print.

Part 1 discusses how the supplied Gamut Test File was created and shows two prints output to an Epson 3880 using ProPhoto RGB and sRGB, how the deficiencies of sRGB gamut affects final output quality. Part 1 discusses what to look for on your own prints in terms of better color output. It also covers Photoshop’s Assign Profile command and how wide gamut spaces mishandled produce dull or over saturated colors due to user error.

Part 2 goes into detail about how to print two versions of the properly converted Gamut Test File  file in Photoshop using Photoshop’s Print command to correctly setup the test files for output. It covers the Convert to Profile command for preparing test files for output to a lab.

Part 3 goes into color theory and illustrates why a wide gamut space produces not only move vibrant and saturated color but detail and color separation compared to a small gamut working space like sRGB.

High Resolution Video: http://digitaldog.net/files/WideGamutPrintVideo.mov
Low Resolution (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLlr7wpAZKs&feature=youtu.be