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Author Topic: Epson Native Resolution (360)  (Read 22672 times)

PeterAit

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #20 on: May 27, 2014, 11:39:13 am »

I have a radical suggestion - LOOK AT THE PRINTS AND DECIDE WHAT YOU LIKE.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #21 on: May 27, 2014, 11:41:08 am »

I have a radical suggestion - LOOK AT THE PRINTS AND DECIDE WHAT YOU LIKE.

Please review the end of Reply #1 above :-)
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Paul2660

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #22 on: May 27, 2014, 12:20:26 pm »

Printing from LR, at 360 dpi just makes it so much easier.  Let LR do the upres/print sharpening or if you want, upres with many of the software tools to 360, but still let LR print.  Just makes things so much easier.  IMO one of the best deals on the market, just for print alone.

Paul
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #23 on: May 27, 2014, 12:22:26 pm »

I have a radical suggestion - LOOK AT THE PRINTS AND DECIDE WHAT YOU LIKE.

Hi Peter,

Many people are rather poor at judging by eye, because they don't know what to look for. But others will spot their judgement errors pretty fast. So there is nothing wrong with asking for some opinions/advice.

Cheers,
Bart
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #24 on: May 27, 2014, 12:31:10 pm »

Well, you image data does get transformed to 360ppi but it's not by the print driver, it's the OS level print pipeline that does it...

Quote
The print driver reports it's "resolution" to the OS level print pipeline...

Quote
...the print driver doesn't do any resolution changes...

As an interesting aside, what happens when you send a file to an outside lab for printing, especially if you do not know which printer they are using and what its native resolution is? Inferred from the above, it means that the lab computer's OS would do the resolution changes? How would you then optimize the file before sending (if at all)?

Quote
P.S. The above largely applies to glossy media. Media like canvas or rough watercolor paper may not show any substantial benefits.

That seems about right. I sent my files for 20x30 canvas prints to an outside lab at the files' native resolution (or whatever it was after cropping), which often meant something barely above 100ppi (old Canon 20D files, for instance). The prints turned out rather well.

Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #25 on: May 27, 2014, 12:31:53 pm »

Without putting too fine a point on it, perhaps we can all agree that seeing for oneself is perhaps a necessary but not always sufficient provision.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #26 on: May 27, 2014, 01:09:21 pm »

As an interesting aside, what happens when you send a file to an outside lab for printing, especially if you do not know which printer they are using and what its native resolution is? Inferred from the above, it means that the lab computer's OS would do the resolution changes? How would you then optimize the file before sending (if at all)?

Hi Slobodan,

Excellent point, assuming one subscribes to 'the OS level print pipeline does resampling' idea, which I don't. The sometimes printer specific print application, other times just the printer driver, will do the resampling, and can be set or disabled. Applications like Qimage will do all resampling, add a user selectable amount of sharpening at the pixel level after resampling, add optional dithering for profile conversions after all that, and then sends the data stream to the printer driver which only dithers the ink-colors. Maybe the Mac OS adds some complications by enforcing some additional color management.

Some printer drivers even allow to adjust the upsampling quality, with edge enhancement and such. I don't see how the OS could do that in different ways for different printer driver algorithms.

When outsourcing files for printing, I prepare them with the colorprofile and native resolution of the printer that will be used for the actual print. It's not always easy to get that info, but serious print operations are happy to assist by making profiles available and will share info about the equipment they use (and which settings they use, sometimes a compromise for production speed!).

Cheers,
Bart
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #27 on: May 27, 2014, 01:16:01 pm »

Without putting too fine a point on it, perhaps we can all agree that seeing for oneself is perhaps a necessary but not always sufficient provision.

LOL, nicely worded ...

However, allow me to 'point out' that merely switching on/off the 'Finest detail' setting is not enough for a good comparison, because printing at a finer detail level also allows/requires to use different output sharpening settings ... In addition, a different level of noise can be added to the image data to hide posterization and suggest detail for extreme up-sampling factors.

Cheers,
Bart
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #28 on: May 27, 2014, 01:39:11 pm »

... In addition, a different level of noise can be added to the image data to hide posterization and suggest detail for extreme up-sampling factors.

Which brings us to a question regarding Lightroom processing pipeline. LR can add noise as an effect, and LR can uprez in the printing module. The question is, does LR add noise before or after uprezzing?

digitaldog

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #29 on: May 27, 2014, 01:49:27 pm »

I have a radical suggestion - LOOK AT THE PRINTS AND DECIDE WHAT YOU LIKE.
I sent a Roman 16 image (Magenta woman knitting) out to my 3880 at 360 PPI resized for the 8x11 and one native resolution which worked out to 224 PPI. Output to Epson Glossy paper. I can't see any difference until I put a powerful loupe on the two cut so they line up to see the them side by side. One could argue the 360 PPI looks a tiny bit sharpener on the fine details but it's nearly microscopic. At least with this image quality and output size, I wouldn't even trouble myself sizing to exactly 360 PPI.
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RachelleK

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #30 on: May 27, 2014, 06:54:36 pm »


In the case of Epson that reported resolution will be either 360 or 720 (on pro printers with Finest Detail checked). On Canon or HP that reported resolution will be either 300 or 600 depending on the driver settings.

Other drivers, such as with the PrintFab RIP, can send a reported resolution of 1440.  However, that makes for very large files spooled and sent to the printer.

R
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ognita

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #31 on: May 27, 2014, 07:46:08 pm »

To those who suggest to use LR to print - thank you. But I am going through the ABW route with custom gray profile. Yes, I am on a Windows platform.
Would you say that LR is better in printing? I mean engine wise (considering the same skills of the printer person)

I sent a Roman 16 image (Magenta woman knitting) out to my 3880 at 360 PPI resized for the 8x11 and one native resolution which worked out to 224 PPI. Output to Epson Glossy paper. I can't see any difference until I put a powerful loupe on the two cut so they line up to see the them side by side. One could argue the 360 PPI looks a tiny bit sharpener on the fine details but it's nearly microscopic. At least with this image quality and output size, I wouldn't even trouble myself sizing to exactly 360 PPI.
Maybe I can just let it go as well :) I have to check. Target size is 20x20 inches. I have done it several times before - print  20x20 inches @360 ppi with only a 2500 pixel file. I just thought that I might be missing something out or there's a better or easier (wherein the difference is not noticeable) way.

Thanks for all your input guys!
« Last Edit: May 27, 2014, 07:55:42 pm by ognita »
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #32 on: May 27, 2014, 09:36:16 pm »

To those who suggest to use LR to print - thank you. But I am going through the ABW route with custom gray profile. Yes, I am on a Windows platform.
Would you say that LR is better in printing? I mean engine wise (considering the same skills of the printer person)
Maybe I can just let it go as well :) I have to check. Target size is 20x20 inches. I have done it several times before - print  20x20 inches @360 ppi with only a 2500 pixel file. I just thought that I might be missing something out or there's a better or easier (wherein the difference is not noticeable) way.

Thanks for all your input guys!

You should not deny yourself the opportunity of making B&W prints softproofed (in Develop) and then printed through the Lightroom Print module, preserving your custom profile, and comparing the outcome with what you do in ABW. You may be surprised.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #33 on: May 28, 2014, 06:08:21 am »

Would you say that LR is better in printing? I mean engine wise (considering the same skills of the printer person)

LR is pretty decent, but with more effort you can do better. Not everybody has the stamina (or skills) to take those few extra steps that will produce above average results. You have Perfect resize, which should be able to do better upsampling (even from below 360 PPI going all the way to 720 PPI, especially with sharp edge detail), and when you add some spatial detail enhancement after that at the highest resolution level (720 PPI), you can really make a difference compared to the more limited control options of LR.

Quote
I just thought that I might be missing something out or there's a better or easier (wherein the difference is not noticeable) way.

Better, probably yes, but not easier. Quality requires effort.

Cheers,
Bart
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #34 on: May 28, 2014, 06:15:54 am »

Quality is (a) context sensitive and (b) in the eye of the beholder; therefore it is necessary to make one's own comparisons of the options and decide what workflow is the most appropriate relative to one's own needs and objectives.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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ognita

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #35 on: May 28, 2014, 06:46:27 am »

Quality is (a) context sensitive and (b) in the eye of the beholder; therefore it is necessary to make one's own comparisons of the options and decide what workflow is the most appropriate relative to one's own needs and objectives.
Better, probably yes, but not easier. Quality requires effort.

Couldn't agree more.

Schewe

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #36 on: June 02, 2014, 01:32:46 am »

Excellent point, assuming one subscribes to 'the OS level print pipeline does resampling' idea, which I don't.

Yeah, ya know...based on the discussions I've had with the "experts" (meaning the guys from Epson and Adobe who write the code) I keep coming back to the question, if the OS level print pipeline doesn't do the resampling, why does the print driver need to report the print resolution to the OS?

Epson "reports" either 360 or 720 DPI in the system...Canon/HP either 300/600 DPI. We know this and can prove that the driver reports to the OS what the desired resolution the driver wants...We know that the apps send the image data to the print pipeline without changes (unless the user does something proactive). I have been told by Epson that the driver itself doesn't do any resampling. So, what happens between the app & the driver? On Mac, potentially a lot. On Windows much less.

But, in either case, I don't think it's the application nor the print driver doing any resolution changes...I think it's the OS that takes the app data and hands it off to the driver-and makes the changes required for both resolution and color handling.

Can alternative resampling do a better job? You bet! I think we've proven that...upsampling to the reported driver resolution has show better results than letting the resolution changes happen outside of the print pipeline. Right? We agree that taking an active role in sending the correct sharpened resolution to the driver is better than not doing the post processing?

I really don't think the app nor the driver does the resampling...I think it's a crude resampling done by the print pipeline–and I think we agree that it's less than optimal, right?
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #37 on: June 02, 2014, 06:47:00 am »

Yeah, ya know...based on the discussions I've had with the "experts" (meaning the guys from Epson and Adobe who write the code) I keep coming back to the question, if the OS level print pipeline doesn't do the resampling, why does the print driver need to report the print resolution to the OS?

Epson "reports" either 360 or 720 DPI in the system...Canon/HP either 300/600 DPI. We know this and can prove that the driver reports to the OS what the desired resolution the driver wants...We know that the apps send the image data to the print pipeline without changes (unless the user does something proactive). I have been told by Epson that the driver itself doesn't do any resampling. So, what happens between the app & the driver? On Mac, potentially a lot. On Windows much less.

But, in either case, I don't think it's the application nor the print driver doing any resolution changes...I think it's the OS that takes the app data and hands it off to the driver-and makes the changes required for both resolution and color handling.

Can alternative resampling do a better job? You bet! I think we've proven that...upsampling to the reported driver resolution has show better results than letting the resolution changes happen outside of the print pipeline. Right? We agree that taking an active role in sending the correct sharpened resolution to the driver is better than not doing the post processing?

I really don't think the app nor the driver does the resampling...I think it's a crude resampling done by the print pipeline–and I think we agree that it's less than optimal, right?

For what reason a printing route part utters the request for a certain input resolution (300 etc PPI>HP, Canon, 360 etc PPI Epson) I do not know for sure but Qimage Ultimate in default mode will auto-magically resample to that requested PPI any image loaded on the print page. Either the OS or the driver makes that request. If the OS does it then it has to interact with the driver and driver settings to put that request for 300, 600 or 1200 PPI specifically (my HPs). What I recall is that Qimage Ultimate checks a Windows API to get the information of the requested input resolution. Maybe the Windows system architecture is made flexible to allow any part of the print route to do the resampling to the requested input resolution. There will not be an issue if the application like QU does it up front and the rest of the chain sees that the data is already at the requested resolution so will not interfere.

Given this line of text by Mike Chaney I would say it is the (Windows) driver that does the resampling normally:
"As can be seen in the samples below, Qimage Ultimate, which automatically resamples to native driver resolution, does a much better job at resampling than the driver and eliminates much of the artifacts (aliasing) caused by the driver not having the best resampling algorithm"

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Mark D Segal

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #38 on: June 02, 2014, 08:05:22 am »

Yeah, ya know...based on the discussions I've had with the "experts" (meaning the guys from Epson and Adobe who write the code) I keep coming back to the question, if the OS level print pipeline doesn't do the resampling, why does the print driver need to report the print resolution to the OS?

Epson "reports" either 360 or 720 DPI in the system...Canon/HP either 300/600 DPI. We know this and can prove that the driver reports to the OS what the desired resolution the driver wants...We know that the apps send the image data to the print pipeline without changes (unless the user does something proactive). I have been told by Epson that the driver itself doesn't do any resampling. So, what happens between the app & the driver? On Mac, potentially a lot. On Windows much less.

But, in either case, I don't think it's the application nor the print driver doing any resolution changes...I think it's the OS that takes the app data and hands it off to the driver-and makes the changes required for both resolution and color handling.

Can alternative resampling do a better job? You bet! I think we've proven that...upsampling to the reported driver resolution has show better results than letting the resolution changes happen outside of the print pipeline. Right? We agree that taking an active role in sending the correct sharpened resolution to the driver is better than not doing the post processing?

I really don't think the app nor the driver does the resampling...I think it's a crude resampling done by the print pipeline–and I think we agree that it's less than optimal, right?

Jeff, based on your understanding of how Lightroom works, when we process a photo in Develop and open it in Print, then in the Print dialogue specify a resolution of say 360, can we take it that there is an LR algorithm that does the resampling? And if so would you put it on par with any other resampling algorithms you've had experience with?

Mark
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Paul2660

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Re: Epson Native Resolution (360)
« Reply #39 on: June 02, 2014, 10:23:17 am »

As a user of Perfect Resize all the way back to the genuine Fractals days, I personally don't see much difference between LR uprez to 360 and taking a image to 360 with Perfect resize and then printing from LR at 360.  I have done enough tests over the years. 

Perfect resize take a whole lot longer to run which makes you think something is better greater going on, however in final print on 9900 at 40- x 60 to 36 x72 output, I just don't see the differences.  But it's an individual degree of detail that each person is striving to get to.  Personally on anything smaller 20 x 30 24 x 36, if the image was taken with a modern DSLR with a good lens and the raw was worked well, I don't think you will see any differences to the naked eye, maybe under magnification with a loupe.

LR for the price, really does a great job, let it do the work. 

Paul
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