ImagePrint... Really?

[Jager]

Jeff's related thread on B&W printing options prompted me to download the ImagePrint RIP software (in demo mode) and give it a whirl.

Backdrop... for many years I printed directly out of Photoshop, creating multiple FINAL versions of an image, depending upon media size.  The last few years I've done all my printing directly out of Lightroom.  I find it to be a notable improvement, especially not having to save (and track) multiple versions of files.

I'm primarily a B&W photographer.  If a file is not native grayscale (i.e. scanned film or Leica Monochrom), I almost always convert in SEP; very occasionally in Lightroom.  I print to an Epson 3880 and, save for those odd occasions when I'm printing a color file, use ABW mode.  I like the quality in ABW.  But the fact that its doings are largely a black box, and its inability to soft-proof an image, lead me to look at ImagePrint.

Installing IP on my Mac was easy peasy.  On firing up the software, though, I was stunned by how kludgy the interface is.  Not that that is insurmountable.  Even with crappy software, you learn how to do what you need to do and then you just kind of forget how bad the design is.  Still, it's been a long time since I've seen a user interface this awful.

Then there's the dongle.  Really, a dongle?!  It's almost like I could close my eyes and pretend it's 1985!

The good news, UI issues aside, is that it seems to soft proof really well.  And some of it's subtle features like narrow-gamut tinting seem genuinely useful.

Ultimately, the thing that would sway me is output quality.  Alas, when I printed an image in ABW and then out of ImagePrint, to compare, the IP version is so overwrought with its DEMO MODE watermark that it's really quite difficult to discern any nuanced difference between them.  The only thing I can say for sure is there isn't a dramatic difference.  Between them, I seem to like the ABW version best, though acknowledge that might just be my emotional response to the heavy-handed watermark on the IP version, versus the clean Epson print.

Which leads to my question.  How many here actually use ImagePrint to maximize B&W print quality using OEM Epson inks?  A handful in Jeff's thread clearly favor it.  I'm wondering how extensive it's use might be?  Or has it, with the improvement in OEM printing, largely lost its benefit for most?

Thanks,

(another) Jeff

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Then there's the dongle.  Really, a dongle?!  It's almost like I could close my eyes and pretend it's 1985!

If you use a RIP, you will find that many of them uses dongles. I use ImagePrint and EFI Fiery, and I'm testing GMG Colorproof right now. All of them uses dongles.

And when you test ImagePrint, be sure to adjust the black point compensation to get the best black, without losing separation in the darkest shadow areas. It takes some testing to get the best out of the program, but these small adjustments are important to really get the best prints.

[michael]

And, remember the availability of many hundreds of very high quality profiles at no extra charge or effort.

Michael

[deanwork]

If you really want to compare apples to apples, test Image Print against  QTR, the $50.00 program ( for ANY Epson printer ) and then see if you notice any difference for bw. You have much better custom control over linearization with QTR. I would use the 51 patch grayscale, not the 4x24 chart to linearize. If you have an I1 you can use Color Port to do that and avoid the old Profile Maker Pro incompatibility issues, especially if you are on a recent Mac os.

Scott Martin worked this out - http://www.on-sight.com/using-colorport-for-qtr-grayscale-and-alt-process-measurement-and-profiling/

It seems to me that Image Print is the most useful for Epson people who don't want to make their own ICC profiles for color work on a variety of media. Their color profiles are quite good and there are a lot of them. But for me I'd spend the money on the X-Rite I1 package, then you can use it on any printer your have now or may have in the future and also profile any media.

john

[Paul2660]

QTR can produce beautiful B&W from Epson.  However the process of creating the custom curves for each paper i found both confusing and frustrating. I had hoped be a bit less. I gave it my all with my 9880 but never got the curve I really liked. Never tried it on my 9900.   The help and manual were not very clear to me. More was written on the MAC side.

I had hoped there would be a bit more sharing of profiles but never did see that.

Still might try it again one of these days.

Paul

[deanwork]

Yea it's not very intuitive on the pc side, even loading existing curves is strange.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

It seems to me that Image Print is the most useful for Epson people who don't want to make their own ICC profiles for color work on a variety of media. Their color profiles are quite good and there are a lot of them. But for me I'd spend the money on the X-Rite I1 package, then you can use it on any printer your have now or may have in the future and also profile any media.

I have all the equipment to make icc-profiles and I do that a lot for photographers that we work with. But as we print on a lot of different papers, and to make a high quality profiles takes some time, ImagePrint is a big timesaver for me. And as I know that the profiles are of a very high quality, both for colour and B&W, we can use all of these papers without spending time to create a profile. And every now and then I create a profile for colour work in ImagePrint. If I'm very careful, I can create a better profile than some of the profiles that you get from Colorbyte.

But I have to read the charts three or four times, make an average of these measurements and then smooth the values in a wonderful program called ColorAnt and then create a profile. After a few hours work I might have a better profile than the one provided by Colorbyte.

[Jager]

Thanks for the input, guys. 

I understand the benefit of the large library of profiles that ImagePrint provides.  That said, I print to a handful of fairly mainstream papers (Epson and Canson) for which profiles are readily available. 

I'm also not keen on testing RIPs, building my own profiles, or otherwise embarking upon arcane explorations.  I'd like to be able to soft proof, but that is really a minor issue.  Ultimately my question circles around whether or not output image quality can be meaningfully advanced by using ImagePrint (or any other RIP, using OEM Epson inks).  My first-blush exposure, via IP's demo trial, would suggest... not so much.

I recognize that first, quick truths are oftentimes anything but, though.  And so I figured that if a RIP is truly the way to go, most all the folks here - the most serious image printing community I know of - would surely be using one?  My sense is again, not so much.  Some do.  Some don't.

Which would be consistent with a product that perhaps provides a bit of benefit here or there, but nothing substantial.  Am I wrong in that conclusion?

[Georgecp]

Hi Jeff,

I have been down this road.  I downloaded, tested, and purchased Imageprint 9 for color printing on my Epson 4900.  While the interface takes some getting used to, I found the image quality demonstrably better, to my eye, than printing out of photoshop or LR and using the Adobe/Apple/Epson color management food chain. The largest difference to my eye was in the quarter tones - tonality below middle gray but not black.  I found the prints made with Imageprint to have much better shadow separation, visibility, and color.  The difference was subtle but important enough that I spent the money and purchased the program.  While their pre-canned profiles are part of the value proposition, I have also made  my own and integrated them into Imageprint (according to their instructions and support which are good) and found the results to be even better.  The conclusion I reached is that Colorbyte has had one focus for years; making the best possible output for Epson printers independent of the other agendas/evolutions that Apple/Adobe/Epson have.  They do this better than anyone.  I am making the best prints I have ever made with this program and my Epson 4900.  For workflow, I can directly "edit in" imageprint straight from Lightroom so the process is not disjointed.  The new version of Imageprint, V10, will also have output sharpening to complete a straightforward workflow.

While I have tried imageprint for B&W, I have been a long-time user of Cone Piezography and QTR and find that I like those prints more.  Especially with Cones Glossy inkset, the prints are "in" the paper rather than "on" the paper with a beautiful tonal curve.  I have a dedicated Epson 4880 with Cone Inks for this purpose.  If you are serious about B&W, and your message indicates that you are, you owe it to yourself to fully explore this option or another dedicated inkset to see if the results are meaningful to you.  Cone will make custom prints using their inksets from your favorite files or there are many practitioners (tyler boley is one of the great ones) who do custom printing with Cone Inks.  With B&W the impact of tonality, paper/ink color, and images being in/on the paper were important to me..the only way to definitively know is to try for yourself.  The options are there.

Good luck in your search.

George


George

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Thanks for the input, guys. 

I understand the benefit of the large library of profiles that ImagePrint provides.  That said, I print to a handful of fairly mainstream papers (Epson and Canson) for which profiles are readily available. 

I'm also not keen on testing RIPs, building my own profiles, or otherwise embarking upon arcane explorations.  I'd like to be able to soft proof, but that is really a minor issue.  Ultimately my question circles around whether or not output image quality can be meaningfully advanced by using ImagePrint (or any other RIP, using OEM Epson inks).  My first-blush exposure, via IP's demo trial, would suggest... not so much.

There is a learning curve with IP, as with any other software. What black point compensation to use, should I use the DCM, if so how to adjust these settings and so on. When I started out with fine art printing, the difference between the Epson driver and the supplied profiles were huge. Today the differences are smaller, but every time I test I can see enough of an advantage with IP both for colour and B&W. And as many of our customers want prints that will last even if displayed, the better light fastness of the ImagePrint prints are of great importance to us.

[Dan Wells]

Assuming a relatively vanilla workflow (Epson inks - either 3880 or, in my case, 7900, with a paper for which a high-quality profile exists), how much difference does IP make? I have no doubt of its value with Cone inks, really odd papers or other unusual situations! Is the previous comment on the quartertones related to Epson inks or third-party inks? When ImagePrint first came out, printers were nastily non-linear things, with relatively small gamuts (the first pigment printers like the Stylus 2000P, 7500 and 9500 couldn't even reach all of sRGB, and color relationships were really strange!). Again, there was no question of IP's value in that situation! Now, with a very well-behaved printer with a gamut that reaches Adobe RGB nearly everywhere and exceeds it in significant areas, is there much more for IP to do?

Dan

[deanwork]

Cone's K7 inks are set up for QTR not Imageprint.

Imageprint is set up for Epson inks.

[aaronchan]

I have tried IP7 back in 2009, I really don't like it at all back in that time.
Let's put longevity on the side.
To me, quality is based on technical skills.
IP has a very close loop calibration procedure back in their office to calibrate all the paper and printers.
Epson printers are getting really good on the quality consistancy but variation should still appear after period of usage.

I have my own custom calibration target and method to achive very nutrual b&w print out of a color icc profile on my previous Canon 8300. Instead of using Bowhus RIP, first of all I don't have to pay extra on it and second, I can accurately preview the softproof with my Eizo monitor as well.

I do still believe in "A superb ICC profile could do all kinds of image".

Aaron

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Again, there was no question of IP's value in that situation! Now, with a very well-behaved printer with a gamut that reaches Adobe RGB nearly everywhere and exceeds it in significant areas, is there much more for IP to do?

Dan

For me it's first the workflow advantages. It is so much easier and faster to set up a custom paper size, to add one or several images and place them exactly where I want them. Second, it's that we avoid all the small problems and changes that has affected the print workflow with every upgrade to the OS, Photoshop or driver. Third, we still see a quality advantage, especially as the gamut is a little bit bigger. And as we do a lot of B&W prints, where the quality advantage is clearly visible, we don't have to dedicate a printer to B&W.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Epson printers are getting really good on the quality consistancy but variation should still appear after period of usage.

I use another RIP, EFI Fiery, for proofing. I have set up and profiled 10 such systems for customers. When you profile such a system, you tweak it until your test chart show a Delta E less than 1 on average.

I had to replace a printer for one of our customers, because a water pipe broke and flooded the printer with water during a weekend. I thought that I had to reprofile the new printer, as the old one was two years old and had been used a lot. But when I measured the test chart, I saw a difference of less than Delta E 1 between the charts made on the old printer and the new one.

Of course this is just one printer. You have to test at least 10 printers the same way to see if they are stable over time. But at least it proved that they can be.

[Jager]

Thanks again, gentlemen.

George, your post in particular has me now thinking in a different direction.  I started this thread out of the - fairly idle, I thought - wonder if a RIP might be a fairly painless path to greater print quality.  My one, overarching requirement was that under no circumstances would I deviate from the Epson OEM inks.  Having spent much time back in the day on the Digital Silver and Black and White Printing list servers and heard the endless suffering associated with early 3rd-party ink sets, I absolutely was not going to go there.  Your mention of your dedicated B&W setup prompted me to spend a few hours poking around.

It seems things have matured a bit.  Maybe thinking about a RIP, all by itself, is the tail wagging the dog.

I've sent off for Cone's sample pack of five images printed in his different ink sets.  I don't know where all this will go.  Certainly this is a road I didn't expect to travel.  But if a black-only ink set will get me noticeably superior print quality, the workflow isn't too esoteric, and printer reliability doesn't suffer, I'll probably go there.

Having gone to bed last night with that thought in mind, this morning I came across this post in another thread from Mark (MHMG) from a few months ago...

"This statement needs to be qualified somewhat. The Piezography "Carbon Sepia" and the more recent "Carbon K7" sets are indeed full carbon pigment ink sets, and as such they are more lightfast than OEM color sets even when the OEM inks are run in full grayscale or "advanced B&W" modes. But the OEM B&W modes are significantly more lightfast than other Piezography shades like "selenium", "neutral", "warm" etc., on just about any media. The Piezography full carbon pigment is considerably warmer than the MIS Eboni full carbon on most media, so Cone achieves his more neutral Piezography shades by blending cyan and magenta pigments into the mix. The magenta drops out first, causing the print to eventually turn more greenish-gray in appearance. Greenish-gray tones in  B&W prints are not a visually acceptable outcome for most folks. The light fade resistance of the cooler Piezography shades is therefore only moderate at best and also more sensitive to choice of media as well when compared to B&W prints made using OEM inks and OEM driver settings.

That said, as long as the print collector knows that not all Piezography prints are highly lightfast and therefore takes care in choosing illumination levels and/or managing the time on display, then the more conservative display policies will allow the more neutral toned Piezography prints to last many generations before noticeably turning more greenish gray. Failure to implement smart illumination/display policies for the cooler toned Piezography ink sets will indeed result in greenish-gray prints more than likely within one's own lifetime."

That certainly gave me pause.  Having lived through the pretty awful early years of dye-based photo inkjet printing, I was absolutely in the crowd cheering the move to dramatically-more-lightfast pigment-based ink sets.   I'm not inclined to retrace that hard-won ground.  It's a disappointment to hear that most of the "black-only" ink sets... aren't.  And that they have a longevity significantly worse than Epson's own OEM ink set in ABW mode.

Which leaves Carbon as the only Piezography ink set, along with Paul's similar Eboni ink set, which is truly black-only.  I'll be interested to see how the Carbon ink set print compares to the others, once my sample pack arrives.

The road turns crookeder and crookeder...

[Stefan Ohlsson]

That certainly gave me pause.  Having lived through the pretty awful early years of dye-based photo inkjet printing, I was absolutely in the crowd cheering the move to dramatically-more-lightfast pigment-based ink sets.   I'm not inclined to retrace that hard-won ground.  It's a disappointment to hear that most of the "black-only" ink sets... aren't.  And that they have a longevity significantly worse than Epson's own OEM ink set in ABW mode.

If light fastness is important to you, then you should take a look on the ImagePrint B&W print samples that Aardenburg tested. As these profiles don't use any yellow ink, they are more stable than Epson ABW. Even the ImagePrint colour samples were more stable when you use a x900 printer, as the IP profiles use less yellow and more orange ink, which is a more stable ink.

As the tinting feature in ImagePrint is very important to our customers, we can't use a monochrome ink set. If you're only printing your own images, you might find an ink set that's OK for all of your prints, but we have to be able to give an image a slightly cool tone in the shadow, a bit warmer in the mid tones and a neutral tone in the highlights for one customer, a warm tone for the whole image for another one and so one. As I can save these tints, I can apply the same look when we make a new print some months later.

[deanwork]

Aaron,

Is there a target for the I1 Pro X-Rite software that you could recommend for making bw profiles for the 8300 or other printers? Some supplied by X-Rite have
more extended grays than others. Just wondering what your opinion was on how many gray patches are needed? I haven't been able to equal what I get with TBW through any of these targets yet, but I haven't done extensive tests with that.

John

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Aaron,

Is there a target for the I1 Pro X-Rite software that you could recommend for making bw profiles for the 8300 or other printers?

I'm not Aaron, but when I create a profile where it's important to have a very stable gray balance (and when isn't that important?) I do a second round in i1Profiler with a target built with 2502 spot colors. I downloaded that target from X-Rites home page, but now I can't find it there. But I've attached it here.

Place that CXF file in the spot color folder that you'll find in X-Rite's Application Support area. After you have created your first profile, choose to do an optimization. You can then choose spot colors and here you can select this file. Print it out, measure and i1Profiler will rebuild your profile with a better gray balance.

But as it is still built mostly with the color inks, you will still have a problem with metameric failure when you present your images under other lights than daylight.

[Jager]

If light fastness is important to you, then you should take a look on the ImagePrint B&W print samples that Aardenburg tested. As these profiles don't use any yellow ink, they are more stable than Epson ABW. Even the ImagePrint colour samples were more stable when you use a x900 printer, as the IP profiles use less yellow and more orange ink, which is a more stable ink.

As the tinting feature in ImagePrint is very important to our customers, we can't use a monochrome ink set. If you're only printing your own images, you might find an ink set that's OK for all of your prints, but we have to be able to give an image a slightly cool tone in the shadow, a bit warmer in the mid tones and a neutral tone in the highlights for one customer, a warm tone for the whole image for another one and so one. As I can save these tints, I can apply the same look when we make a new print some months later.

Thanks for reminding me of that quality, Stefan.  It suggests to me that ImagePrint (and QTR too, I suppose) make more intelligent use of the OEM ink set than do Epson themselves.  And, yes, lightfastness is an important characteristic to me.

You know, it's funny.  A few days ago I was perfectly happy printing with Epson's ABW.  Now I am quite conflicted!