Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 6   Go Down

Author Topic: Prints Suddenly Anemic  (Read 6767 times)

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #40 on: March 28, 2020, 10:49:49 pm »

Quote
The ICC profile looks fine. Gamut shape is excellent. I see you are using 4066 patches.

I'm surprised that you found that as well. It looked ok to me in ColorThink.

Quote
But the CC image!
Yikes. 13 of the CC colors are between deltaE 13 and 35.

Quite right. The more I look at it the worse it looks. I will get and attach screen captures of the settings as you request. I could understand making a mistake once or even thrice. But, every single time we print an image that started this whole thing, including again this afternoon, it is consistently anemic - very much so. We printed the same image on a P5000 which sits near the 4900 and got excellent results on the same stock. So, I don't know. But another set of eyes and experts eyes to boot is greatly appreciated. I will get those posted as soon as I can.

Thank you again, sir, for your time and help with this.

Mick
« Last Edit: March 28, 2020, 10:56:21 pm by Mick Sang »
Logged

Doug Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2197
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #41 on: March 29, 2020, 12:28:35 am »

Mick,

Something else I want to check is the amount of difference between the profile you posted and an earlier one from the same printer/paper when it was working. I can see what might have drifted/changed by comparing the two and if they were made from the same patch set I can compare those colors directly.

So please post a zip file with the old working profile.
Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #42 on: March 29, 2020, 01:58:45 pm »

Quote
Something else I want to check is the amount of difference between the profile you posted and an earlier one from the same printer/paper when it was working. I can see what might have drifted/changed by comparing the two and if they were made from the same patch set I can compare those colors directly.

So please post a zip file with the old working profile.

Fortunately, we tend to keep the older profiles. I'm not sure why. I suppose it's because whenever I toss things that I've kept because "I might need it someday" I usually need it a day or so after it's gone.

Re the print settings, I'll follow up with those when I get back to that printer.

Zip file attached.

Mick
Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #43 on: March 29, 2020, 02:40:16 pm »

I just took at look at both the old and the new profile myself in CTP. While the new profile looks ok in CTP with "Volume" selected, when it is viewed with points joined by lines, it looks very strange especially as compared to the old profile the gamut surface of which looks ok for both views. Something is very wrong with that new profile that I had not seen before as I looked only at the "Volume" view in CTP. Not sure how I can fix it aside from making a new profile. Not sure why it happened. The Isis-2 is new. I wonder what you have found Mr. Gray.

I tried to upload  CTP videos of both. But, they're too large. So, I've attache 2 pix of each profile.

Mick
Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #44 on: March 29, 2020, 05:25:16 pm »

Please find attached screen captures of the print settings that we used to print the pic that made us aware of the anemic print issue.

While looking at the new and old profiles in CTP earlier today, I recalled that the reason for our making a new profile in February in the first place was because we got a very anemic result upon printing a sample / proof of a scanned and corrected painting for our client. So, we simply assumed that we needed a new profile. After looking at both profiles earlier today, though, while there does appear to be something wrong with that new profile, the anemic results first appeared through the older profile. Both have been uploaded.

Mick
Logged

Doug Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2197
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #45 on: March 29, 2020, 05:47:35 pm »

Profiles are indeed internally quite different.


First the things that are within normal variation:

There are some differences in white point and small differences in gamut boundaries but these are normal. As are small differences from different spectrophotometers (iSis 2, I1Pro2). Both profiles are made with M2.

There is also a difference in white points of about dE:3.  This is not unusual.

Then the things that aren't:

The mapping of internal gamut colors varies a large amount between the old and new profiles:

Here's a DeltaE histogram of Lab values from the A2D1 tables using 100,000 random RGB values. Mean dE is 13.4 which is extremely large. Typical mean variations from differing instruments are on the order of 1 dE.


Logged

Doug Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2197
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #46 on: March 29, 2020, 06:34:59 pm »

Please find attached screen captures of the print settings that we used to print the pic that made us aware of the anemic print issue.

While looking at the new and old profiles in CTP earlier today, I recalled that the reason for our making a new profile in February in the first place was because we got a very anemic result upon printing a sample / proof of a scanned and corrected painting for our client. So, we simply assumed that we needed a new profile. After looking at both profiles earlier today, though, while there does appear to be something wrong with that new profile, the anemic results first appeared through the older profile. Both have been uploaded.

Mick

I can verify that anemic is a good description. Most all the CC colors are printed and much less saturated. But hue and luminance is shifted as well.

I don't see anything wrong in your screenshots. However, I only use Windows and 16 bit print mode is not available for Epsons on Windows. I don't believe ACPU operates in 16 bits. I1Profiler only generates 8 bit targets and should be printed in 8 bit mode.

Generally, 16 bit print mode has some issues. I've seen compatibility issue reports from iOS and I know first hand that Canon's purported 16 bit capable Win. 10 add-in did not, in fact, work but produced 8 bit banding. As a practical matter detecting the difference between 8 bit and higher rez requires instrumentation as the differences are very small and not measurable with 8 bit dithering enabled in Photoshop.

1. So rule of thumb is to use exactly the same device driver settings in I1Profiler as when using the profile with Photoshop manages color and using the profile created by i1Profiler.

2. Avoid 16 bit until 8 bit process has been verified since i1Profiler makes 8 bits print targets. If you actually visually see any difference in 16 bits v 8 bits in any normal photo, run, don't walk back to 8 bits because there is something messed up in 16 bit rendering.

« Last Edit: March 29, 2020, 06:50:08 pm by Doug Gray »
Logged

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #47 on: March 29, 2020, 07:04:00 pm »

None of the issues has anything to do with bit depth nor is there any need to profile with a higher than 8 bits per color.
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #48 on: March 29, 2020, 08:50:17 pm »

Quote
The mapping of internal gamut colors varies a large amount between the old and new profiles:

Here's a DeltaE histogram of Lab values from the A2D1 tables using 100,000 random RGB values. Mean dE is 13.4 which is extremely large. Typical mean variations from differing instruments are on the order of 1 dE.

Thank you for taking the time & trouble to doing this for me. I appreciate it very much. Now we have two issues to try to figure out and fix. We have to try to determine how this happened to the newer profile and we still have no answer as to why our prints are anemic on that printer, since both profiles resulted in anemic prints.

Quote
Generally, 16 bit print mode has some issues. I've seen compatibility issue reports from iOS and I know first hand that Canon's purported 16 bit capable Win. 10 add-in did not, in fact, work but produced 8 bit banding. As a practical matter detecting the difference between 8 bit and higher rez requires instrumentation as the differences are very small and not measurable with 8 bit dithering enabled in Photoshop.

Quote
None of the issues has anything to do with bit depth nor is there any need to profile with a higher than 8 bits per color.

Thank you both for this. I did not know this. Generally, we print in 16 bit. Also when we profile using our Barbieri LFP, Gateway gives a 16 bit option for its charts. So as a matter of habit we print the charts in 16 bit. But, if there's no point to it and if instead it may even be problematic, we will move to 8 bit for the charts.

Quote
So rule of thumb is to use exactly the same device driver settings in I1Profiler as when using the profile with Photoshop manages color and using the profile created by i1Profiler.

This is the other reason why we print profile charts in 16 bit i.e. because we print mostly in 16 bit and we do use exactly the same settings for the prints as for the profile charts.

Quote
2. Avoid 16 bit until 8 bit process has been verified since i1Profiler makes 8 bits print targets. If you actually visually see any difference in 16 bits v 8 bits in any normal photo, run, don't walk back to 8 bits because there is something messed up in 16 bit rendering.

I have encountered articles on this before. It's time we tested it ourselves to find out which is best for us. With the additional time afforded us by the virus outbreak now is as good a time as any. Thanks again for bringing this to my attention.

Tomorrow, we'll reprofile that paper to see if we can resolve that issue. The, we'll continue to pursue an answer to the cause of our anemic print issue. It's a tough one for sure. I thank everyone who posted for your help, information and patience with my attempts to understand certain terms and concepts. I still have much to learn.

Mick


Logged

Doug Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2197
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #49 on: March 29, 2020, 10:07:49 pm »

Andrew is absolutely right that there is no point in making profiles with more than 8 bits. And there should be no issue using 16 bits too.

Except for bugs. 16 bits isn't often used and it's a different datapath in OS drivers. It's also not handled properly by XRite's I1Profiler.

Read the thread below on I1Profiler's strange behavior with fractional (ie: 16 bit) RGB values. This was a few years ago and I don't know if they've fixed it. But as a result I've made a point of making sure all my profiler targets were 8 bit compatible and had no fractional components. Good example of why it's a good idea to stick to default print targets and 8 bits for all paths. Get things working in the simplest configuration then increase patch counts if needed to improve accuracy. I recommend the iSis single US letter target with 957 patches until you find where the problem is.


Side hint: Use M2 only for the iSiS 2. This reduces the scan time by 2x and slightly improves repeatability. The backhitch used for the extra uV pass can increase positioning error though it's normally a very small effect ( < .1dE ave).


Thread on 16 bit I1Profiler issues.
https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=128070.0
Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #50 on: March 29, 2020, 11:03:57 pm »

Quote
Side hint: Use M2 only for the iSiS 2. This reduces the scan time by 2x and slightly improves repeatability. The backhitch used for the extra uV pass can increase positioning error though it's normally a very small effect ( < .1dE ave).

Thanks very much again for the good advice. We've been profiling to M1 lately for some papers and M2 for OBA laden papers - rarely M0. With the Barbieri we profile to M3. That produces better shadow separation for some fine art papers. But, we discovered that it sometimes reduces shadow separation. That's for another post. Nevertheless, we'll print charts with 8bit from now on to play it safe for at least the charts and the profiles.

Re the link that you kindly provided, I read those posts some time ago. I've learned a more since then. So, I'll reread them to get up to date.

Also, F.Y.I. I should add, regarding the old profile that I uploaded earlier, you had requested that I upload an old profile which had worked for us well before. That old profile had indeed worked well enough in the past until one day the prints rendered with very anemic reds. We apresumed the printer had drifted or the paper had changed slightly as Epson doesn't make these papers. That's when we reprofiled and this whole thing started.

We'll get to the bottom of this thing yet. Thanks to all.

Mick
Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #51 on: April 09, 2020, 11:22:20 pm »

Quote
A profile is meant to be a model of the device (i.e. printer) behavior.
Quote
….if it were me, I'd simply drill down. Figure out the L*a*b* of the problem color. Look that up in the profile to get the device values. Print test patches of that device color and measure them. Do the forward lookup of that device color and check the L*a*b*. Lookup that L*a*b*'s device value in the source profile. Convert that through the linked source and destination profile and check the resulting printer device value. etc.

If anyone is still interested in this, here’s an update: We still have not found any reason for or solution to the anemic reds that we’ve been getting in prints from our 4900 and the more we look into this, the stranger the issue becomes. We’ve encountered some interesting test results as we've explored this.

To review, the printer is an Epson Stylus Pro 4900. All nozzles are completely clear. The Vivid Magenta and Vivid Light Magenta inks are new. They were replaced when the issue first became apparent. The paper is Ultra Premium Presentation Matte from Epson. But, as it turns out, other papers are also affected. The custom profile we used had been created two years ago. But, it had worked well until early February when things suddenly changed i.e. reds were suddenly very weak - anemic. The image currently in question is a scan of a painting of a woman’s face in cameo which is primarily comprised of skin tones and warm copper tones. The image was painted on an 8" x 10" copper plate.

We made and printed through 2 new profiles which did not solve or even change the issue. ColorThink Pro revealed that the second profile also turned out to have some malformations as it had been hastily made. So, this week, to really drill down on this thing we made a new profile from 2 sets of large targets each of which was scanned twice through our Isis-2. This yielded four large sets of data which was averaged and two profiles were generated one for M2 and the other for M1 conditions. The structure of the new profiles is much smoother and more uniform than the previous profiles, as seen in CTP.

Then, for our first test, we imported the image into ColorThink Pro, selected 100 colours from the image and transformed them through the UPPM M2 profile. CTP reported average Delta-e2000 of 0.93 to 1.73

For comparison and context, the same colours were transformed through a 1 year old Hot Press Bright M2 profile from the same printer. CTP reported Delta-e2000 average of 1.03 to a high blip of 2.15. A soft proof through this profile looked very good. But a print through that profile on the Hot Press bright yielded a print which was as anemic as the other prints on UPPM.

The soft proof of the file in PhotoShop through the UPPM profile looks good as well i.e. no indication of anemic reds. That said, it had also looked good though the old profile, despite some anomalies in the profile and the anemic result in print.  Again, out of  interest, we soft proofed through our Hot Press Bright profile as well as the UPPM profile. A comparison of the 2 soft proofed images revealed no appreciable visual difference or change as far as the copper tones and reds are concerned and both soft proofs looked very good.

Nevertheless, the actual print from the 4900 on UPPM is as anemic as before - consistently so. The overall appearance has moved from the warm copper tones in the image to cool sandy browns in print. In fact, there is no immediately apparent difference between the printed result from new profile and previous prints through the old profiles.

Then, we printed the same image on a P5000 which sits a few feet away from the 4900. But we used the same profile from the 4900 for the UPPM stock. To our amazement, the print was very close to the original image - the copper tone reds were all ok.

Following that we ran another print back on the 4900 through Photoshop using “Printer Manages Colour" and "Adobe RGB.” The print was good! No trouble at all with the reds.

BUT then we ran another print on the 4900 this time through Epson’s canned profile for that paper and the result was as anemic as the prints through our own profiles. They were all very close.

So, in conclusion, the new profile appears to be ok when printed by the P5000 on UPPM. And the Isis2 appears to be working well especially in view of the fact that we have recently made many new profiles for our new P9570 which are performing beautifully. Finally, it appears that the 4900 is still capable of printing the reds properly but not through ICC profiles - custom or canned.

So, my question is what the hell is going on here? Has anyone experienced this sort of thing before?

Thanks for your time,

Mick

Logged

Doug Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2197
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #52 on: April 10, 2020, 01:02:44 am »

Something is wonky. I suspect driver/iOS bugs.

Here's an interesting idea. Duplicate whatever the driver is doing so it's the same for printing patches you make profiles from and a regular image you are trying to print. Here's how:

1. Take the image you wish to print and convert to your printer profile in Photoshop. Select whatever settings you normally use like Rel. Col. or Perc and possibly BPC.

2. Save it as an 8 bit tif but deselect the attach profile option. You want an untagged image file. Probably not necessary but I like to keep as many things unchanged when troubleshooting.

3. Print the file with ACPU using exactly the same driver settings used for printing profile patches.

Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #53 on: April 10, 2020, 08:33:40 pm »

Quote
Something is wonky. I suspect driver/iOS bugs.

Here's an interesting idea. Duplicate whatever the driver is doing so it's the same for printing patches you make profiles from and a regular image you are trying to print. Here's how:

1. Take the image you wish to print and convert to your printer profile in Photoshop. Select whatever settings you normally use like Rel. Col. or Perc and possibly BPC.

2. Save it as an 8 bit tif but deselect the attach profile option. You want an untagged image file. Probably not necessary but I like to keep as many things unchanged when troubleshooting.

3. Print the file with ACPU using exactly the same driver settings used for printing profile patches.

Mr. Gray, I thank you for your time and especially your expertise, sir. I would NEVER have though to try this. But, it worked. So, I will now see about changing the driver unless you have another suggestion. The driver in use is 9.66 for that machine. I know there is a new one, 10.35 I believe. But, we generally don't upgrade until the need arises. I suppose it has. I will change it and get back. That you again for helping us with this.

Mick
Logged

Doug Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2197
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #54 on: April 10, 2020, 08:47:00 pm »

Mr. Gray, I thank you for your time and especially your expertise, sir. I would NEVER have though to try this. But, it worked. So, I will now see about changing the driver unless you have another suggestion. The driver in use is 9.66 for that machine. I know there is a new one, 10.35 I believe. But, we generally don't upgrade until the need arises. I suppose it has. I will change it and get back. That you again for helping us with this.

Mick


I've never encountered a driver/OS change on Windows but others here have posted things suggesting that iOS changes at times have affected printing. Apple has more coupling between their OS and drivers that is meant to reduce operators misconfiguring things. That tighter coupling may create compatibility issues when either the OEM or Apple upgrades their products.

So there is a very good chance upgrading the driver will fix things. There is an outside chance it won't but I consider it remote since you see the same problems with the OEM profiles.

So let us know if this fixes things. It likely will. Fortunately, you have instrumentation/tools that provided enough quality info to find this.
Logged

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #55 on: April 10, 2020, 09:36:38 pm »

Mick, you're on Mac OS right? And is there a checkbox in your driver of 16-bit and have you been having it set for on? Because there was a bug in older drivers having that option with the check box on.
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #56 on: April 10, 2020, 10:16:35 pm »

Quote
Mick, you're on Mac OS right? And is there a checkbox in your driver of 16-bit and have you been having it set for on? Because there was a bug in older drivers having that option with the check box on.

Yes, thank you Mr. Rodney, we are using a 2016 MacBook Pro for that printer and the P5000 which is a few feet away from it. Generally, we print with 16 bit - not always, but more often than not. We have been doing that only for the past couple of years. Prior to that it was usually 8 bit. The thing is that that printer is 9 years old now and was working very well throughout until this thing started in late January - early February. The only other thing that also changed around then was an OS update to Mojave. But, while we did update the drivers on other MACs for other printers, we did not update for the 4900. I'll do that shortly and we'll see what happens.

The other strange thing that happened earlier in all our testing is that we tried printing to a different paper on that 4900 but using the profile specific to UPPM. To our surprise, the result was good. However, I can't repeat that. So either the problem is intermittent or I screwed something up. But, I really don't believe that I did.

Mick
Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #57 on: April 10, 2020, 10:59:42 pm »

Quote
And is there a checkbox in your driver of 16-bit and have you been having it set for on? Because there was a bug in older drivers having that option with the check box on.

So, I replaced the old driver (9.66) with the new (10.35) and ran a print with 16 bit unchecked. I'm surprised and sorry to say that there is no difference. Another print with 16 bit is the same. The problem persists. All the warm copper tones and reds are muted down to sandy-brown.

I really thought we were onto a cure here. But, now I'm at a total loss and can only hope that someone has another avenue to explore.

At least now we now know that the profile is ok, the printer is capable of printing the reds properly and the driver is new. The only thing that has not been changed AFAIK is the firmware which is MO28B7, 1.00, A000.

Thank you for your time,

Mick
Logged

Doug Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2197
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #58 on: April 10, 2020, 11:13:22 pm »

So, I replaced the old driver (9.66) with the new (10.35) and ran a print with 16 bit unchecked. I'm surprised and sorry to say that there is no difference. Another print with 16 bit is the same. The problem persists. All the warm copper tones and reds are muted down to sandy-brown.

I really thought we were onto a cure here. But, now I'm at a total loss and can only hope that someone has another avenue to explore.

At least now we now know that the profile is ok, the printer is capable of printing the reds properly and the driver is new. The only thing that has not been changed AFAIK is the firmware which is MO28B7, 1.00, A000.

Thank you for your time,

Mick

Well, you can grab a used Windows laptop for cheap until they fix the compatibility problem but since it's an old printer it might be never.
Logged

Mick Sang

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 170
Re: Prints Suddenly Anemic
« Reply #59 on: April 10, 2020, 11:26:18 pm »

Quote
At least now we now know that the profile is ok, the printer is capable of printing the reds properly and the driver is new. The only thing that has not been changed AFAIK is the firmware which is MO28B7, 1.00, A000.

I'm told that the firmware is also current. So now what?
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 6   Go Up