As far as the differences, the originals were printed on the EP900 before I knew I would have to make large prints. When I print the same file on the HPZ there is a color shift and the a bit more contrast. I have tried to tweak the file using layers and so but I can never seem to get them close enough for my satisfaction. I have also tried various profiles and media types and was hoping to find a combination that would be pretty close.
Hi, this strikes me as sounding much too random and ad hoc, rather than going thru the colour management chain with consistent rigour. I feel trying various profiles/media types should not be part of the process.
Since I don't know your process, some of my arm-chairing below might be old news, but it's how I would go thru it.
As echoed earlier, you need to do your own profiling, for that specific paper type, for each printer, if you're not already doing so. Canned pre-made profiles from the printer or media mfrs are unlikely to give the best accuracy for your specific printers / media batch / ink batch / humidity, etc.
I can't speak to the Epson, but the HP Z3200 and the HP Utility Colour Centre software provides everything you need to make your own accurate profiles. In addition you can also do custom profiling targets with larger patch counts, try higher ink load for possibly better results, control how much drying time you allow before you profile, etc., all in the interest of optimizing the printer's output for the best possible results (in your own judgment).
Also you want to make sure the printer is running well, and "well-exercised", before doing any profiling. If the printer sits idle a lot, you can get significant variation on the first bit of printing. So it's best to make sure you've run some exercise prints, verified the heads are working well, etc., before diving into profiling. Some even advocate agitating the ink cartridges (and in some cases even the printheads) to help mix up the pigments if the printer has been sitting idle for quite some time.
And I also think it's best to redo the profiling again before any critical print project. (The software/driver should indicate when a profile is "stale" anyhow.)
Only once you've done this with both printers for that specific media can you then run test prints and compare them to your soft proof on screen. Providing everything is working well, the prints should *relatively* faithfully reflect their respective soft-proof on your screen..., under the appropriate viewing conditions, and within all the the usual limitations of soft-proofing. If one of them shows a significant mismatch with its soft proof, it might indicate there's a problem. (Note carefully this is not a printer-to-printer comparison, it's printerA-to-softproofA and printerB-to-softproofB. The goal is to confirm soft-proofing is working well for each printer.)
I would also take Qimage out of the equation for that testing, and print direct from Photoshop, etc, to rule out any of the Qimage / driver funny business.
Only once you've established that your profiling is accurate are you then in a position to make judgments about what's coming out of the 2 printers and how they compare. And then *maybe* what pre-print adjustments you might choose to make to try to improve the match. But your hands may be tied there because if both profiles reflect their printer's capabilities, then there is really no magic wand you can use to make one printer work like the other -- they can't print colours/tones that they can't print. If you tweak the output to a single printer to help optimize it for better results, the mismatch between the 2 printers may widen.
It's my understanding that you can use one printer to proof prints from another. The HP docs discuss this for sure. Again there are many limitations but you could in concept "limit" the output of the "greater printer" to remain within the range of the "lesser printer", and that might in theory bring them closer together (I've never tried this, but I imagine others here have, when proofing commercial presses, etc). You would of course be leaving performance on the table for the better printer. And it also assumes that one is universally better than the other, whereas it's more likely they are simply "different" -- more range in one aspect, less in another.
Anyhow I think that it's only once you've got all the above running solidly with accurate profiles and reliable soft-proofing that you can then throw Qimage into mix and try to debug whatever that's messing up.
I don't know the level of differences you're seeing in the prints right now. If there are significant/gross differences, I suspect there's a process problem above somewhere (and/or it's still Qimage itself). But if the differences are more subtle and you're just seeing the natural limits of each printer's capabilities, then it is what it is, and you'll have to decide which road to take -- trying to get a closer "match", perhaps by using the press-proof method, or accepting that the images will have subtle differences in different sizes because of the equipment differences, and that's simply "an element of the art", in effect like it's actually printed on a different media in that size.
Hope the above helps somehow, or maybe some future reader. Cheers!
