Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Lately I've been running art reproductions through the Absolute Colorimetric rendering intent. I've discovered that if I add white borders in PS or in Qimage around the prints that these white areas get inked. This makes sense when you think about how AbsCol works.

What I would LIKE to do is add transparent borders, so that no ink is put down in my border space, and I can have crops/cutlines beyond this. Does anyone know how to do this, in Qimage, or in PS?

Hi Stephen
Should be easy to do in Qimage.
Simply add a border in WHITE. No ink will be sprayed, and the crop marks or corners appear at the edge of the border.
See snap attached
Fred

Try it with Absolute Colorimetric rendering. Doesn't work.

Edit: I guess this is a feature request. Mr Chaney? Can we have the option of transparent borders please?

Stephen,
Can you describe what doesn't work, borders or color or corner marks?
I have attached 2 screen snaps.
First one is Print Preview  of Rel Colorimetric
Second is Print Preview of Absolute Colorimetric.

These are print previews of the actual print..... created in the driver.
You  can see the crop marks outside the border

Fred

This wouldn't fit on above  post, but it is a Print to file print.
Qimage makes an actual print image that emulates exactly what Qimage and the driver sent to the printer.
Fred
PS  and now I actually printed to Canon Pro Luster paper using Absolute Colorimetric 
I have borders and crop marks

Thanks, Fred, for taking the time to help with this.

It's border colour that is an issue for me when I print with AbsCol. My borders are set to white, but they get inked because of how AbsCol works. See my attached print preview, with Qimage in the background. The light blue border shown in the print preview carries through to print.

This is all correct, expected behaviour. Qimage is not getting anything wrong. I am not getting any settings wrong either.

I just want to get around it: when I need to print with AbsCol I want to be able to add borders that are completely un-inked.
For me this means being able to set transparent borders. OR being able to set crop marks/lines with an offset that I specify.

(PS: I can see tone in the borders in the two print previews you posted. Did you set borders to pure white? If so check the print you made through AbsCol: is there ink in the borders?)

I can see in the post image what you see, a faint outline.
I promise you this in not on the actual print.
Second, the two images are made differently; one with REL C and one with AB C
I suspect it possible that the screen snap program and handing that image to the Forum software for posting might be room for interference.
I will see if I can find Mike C
Fred
Stephen,
I  just used another border method; mats. I get the same result.
Any chance the profile is made with a white point set to a different shade from the paper color?
Try a different paper/profile

I take it you just want crop marks at some distance outside the print.  First I would like to say that if white causes a light blue border, you probably want that border to be light blue!  If you have any white areas in your photos (white car, white shirts, white roses, etc.) they will look white if the border prints slightly bluish as you show it.  If you do what you are suggesting and just print the photo and cut some paper border around it, your eyes will adjust to the white of the paper and the white subjects in your photos will appear to have a bluish tint.  Even if there is no white in your photos, a paper white border is likely to throw off the color balance because your eyes adjust to the paper which is the wrong neutrality.

In other words, even though the border looks slightly bluish, that is defined as white (not just as a border color but also in your photos too) so if you actually cut the paper at the crop marks and view it without the paper color around it, it'll look like it should because the border won't look bluish once cut as there is no paper white surrounding it.

Having said that, you can do what you want which is just place the crop marks outside the print without printing a colored border.  Here's how.  You don't mention your paper sizes so I'm going to use the example of printing a 7x9 print with a half inch border around it (to give me a cut 8x10):

• Add the print at a size of 7x9 by clicking the thumbnail and then choosing the "Custom" print size and picking 7x9 under the "enter specific size" option.
• On the Prints tab, check the box labelled "Set as new working size" under the listed print sizes.
• Now choose 8x10 to make that the new working size (you can also pick a custom size like you did in the first step).
• Under the live view, drop down the print placement button and choose Template/centered.

After doing that, you'll have a 7x9 print inside an 8x10 template and any crop marks will appear at the template location (8x10 size).  No border is printed because you are simply using this method to place the print and crop marks.

Regards,
Mike

Which is what I thought too. I use the white borders + corner marks often but did not notice issues so far and when it happens it is usually something before the printing CM stage that I neglected.  That said I did ask Mike several years ago how the Qimage borders are treated in CM. That because I sometimes used a color in the image to define the color in the borders.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots

Hi Ernst.
Hope all is well.
I had thought of a possible reason/answer as to  why I do not get a tone or color in my prints when I actually print and do not rely on Print Preview.

I am using a Canon Pro 100 printer, Canon OEM ink, and most importantly, CANON PAPER
I suspect that the canon driver is responding to the settings and seeing PRO LUSTER, knows the paper color. Possible??
So when I print, that border is invisible under a strong Ott light or any light.

Fred

Mike first:
Your first two paragraphs: Yes. I get all this. I understand what AbsCol is doing. I haven't actually tested what you suggest: cutting the paper at the edge of the blue border. I'll give it a bash. I suspect it will work fine under D50 (or close to it), but not under other light sources.

Thanks for the template work-around suggestion. I try it today/tomorrow.

Fred and others:
My paper profiles were built with white point set as paper white. And I've tried this with a range of different profiles. Mine, Epson driver canned profiles, Canon driver canned profiles. All give the same result, except the border colour is different for each paper - as expected.

All objects in QU are color managed which means that borders, templates, page background color, and even text all get profiled.  Most papers have optical brighteners and even if they don't, the white of the paper differs from white as defined in color spaces so when you print with absolute colorimetric, it's going to try to "make" the paper the white of the color space, so some ink will be used to try to balance the paper white to actual D50 white.  Since most profiles define the paper white as 100% luminance (brightness), it usually only results in a slight change.  On most of my profiles it's hard to tell that any ink is laid down particularly after the print is cut from the page, unless you look with a magnifying glass and then you can see some sparse dots that are trying to change the tint of the paper.

I typically only use Absolute Colorimetric when I'm printing a logo or some graphic that I want to be sure is the right absolute color.  For photos, I'm fine with the photo being adjusted to match the paper white since your eyes adjust to that and lighting is often dynamic anyway, so I use Relative Colorimetric.

Mike

Thank you Mike, Fred,

Absolute Colormetric I use for reproductions when I am sure most of the colors fall within the printer/media preset/paper gamut. The papers I prefer are near neutral and without OBA content. Despite copy lamps/camera profiling, flatfield lighting correction on the file and good printer CM there will be some colors shifted but at least less to correct than with other rendering choices. Main issue is old pigments used in the originals, should consider custom made color targets for the camera to overcome that.
Custom profiling and a choice for either paper white point or neutral grey but I know which one to select. Usually made with the on board UV-cut spectrometer of the Z3200 printer but when needed I have a non cut i1 Pro available, hardly use it for that though. Relative Colormetric + BPC (usually) for photos, sometimes Perceptual.

I know there is some slack in the whites by what goes to the printer and what becomes visible. Even use it for the driver's Economy choice for the addition of the Z3200 gloss enhancer on the images. The gloss enhancer is only used within the image then but does not cover the RGB 255/255/255 whites in the image. A print filter to bring the R to 254 is just enough to get the gloss enhancer on the image whites and I do not see color dots there. Qimage's added border white does not get the gloss enhancer so the printed image gets a bit the appeal of a spot varnish in printing.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots

I wish I could get papers locally (South Africa) that meet these criteria. I can get warm papers without OBAs or more neutral papers that rely on OBAs but not neutral papers without OBAs. I've think I have tried all that are available in our market. What papers do you suggest? (I've played with Canson papers that got pretty close, but alas, no distributors here)

Mike: the template trick works. A little fiddly, but not that bad. I haven't tested the cutting-to-border trick yet.

Absolutely free of OBA is not necessary either so the choices are wider than you might expect.
You can download SpectrumViz from my web pages and check what the OBA content is + when the cursor is on the paper name the Lab values are shown.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots

Thanks Ernst. Spectrumviz has been very useful to me over the past few years, but I didn't know about the Lab values! Not paying attention, I guess.

Hahnemühle is readily available so I'm going to see if I can get hold of some PhotoRag Ultrasmooth. It seems to fit the bill.

OK, finally got a chance to test how well the borders worked, as suggested above. Let the inked borders print and then trim right down to the edges of the borders. It works! And under a variety of light sources too - daylight, solux 4700k, tungsten 2800k. It does a pretty good job of neutralizing the white of the warm paper I'm using. The trouble is that it is reliant on your eyes adjusting to the white of the print. If you look away to a different light source, and then look back to the print, for a second or so the print has a blue-ish border until your eyes adjust again. I'll keep using borders without any inking, as it seems to be more consistent. It is also consistent with prints previously produced.

The template border trick: I tried it again this morning and hit a snag. I set the print size to 380x290mmmm and placed an image in the workspace. I set the layout to Template Centered. Then I set the new working size to 446x366mm. Then I selected a dashed line under Cut Marks. Then I shifted the print up a few mm to give the bottom border a bit more space. Then I printed.

The print came out accurately at 380x290mm but the dashed line printed at 445x362mm. 4mm less than specified.

At the moment I can't use this template work-around. I repeat my request, if it's possible, for a transparent border option. This will also enable me to print different sized prints in the same layout, which is not possible with the work-around.

I could add a spacing (transparent) border but...

If you print the borders with no ink, the opposite is true: as you are looking at the print, your eyes adjust to the border which is paper white so any white in your photo is going to look bluish.  In addition, even the colors in the photo will be shifted a bit toward blue.  If you are printing with a paper white border, you should really be printing with relative colorimetric intent.  Have you printed with relative colorimetric and absolute colorimetric and compared them?  I'm curious as to what you see that is making you print absolute colorimetric.  In addition, and I didn't point this out before, but your white shift (that bluish tint) is a far greater shift in white than I have ever seen on any paper using AC intent.  With every paper I have ever tested (even third party papers), the white shift is so subtle that you can't even pick it up with your eyes: you have to use magnification to even tell there is any ink laid on the paper.  Yes, if you look at the print before cutting it, you can tell that the border is a slightly different shade but it typically only looks like a different shade of white: usually just a little bit more gray than white, not blue, red, or any color tint.  So that has me questioning your profile to begin with, or maybe the paper if you are truly printing on paper with that much of a yellowish or redish cast that it needs that much correction to make it neutral.

Mike

Yes, the effect does work the other way too, but for some reason it's not as pronounced.

For the last 7 years I've been using Relative almost exclusively and have only recently started experimenting with Absolute rendering. Relative works most of the time but the whitepoint shift affects all the lighter colours and I tend to loose out on light blues when I print on warm paper. I also fight against BPC, which lightens the blacks/deep shadows a bit too much. I need to have both rendering intents as options and it would be really good if I could use the same workflow for both. I prefer to have no ink in the borders when I use Absolute so I really would appreciate having a transparent border option.

I have other papers but for this discussion I'm working with Epson Cold Press Natural. One of the warmer papers out there so it's going to need a significant amount of blue to neutralize it. Profiled carefully by myself through i1Profiler. White point set to paper white point. All you've seen so far is my screengrab of an Epson Print Preview on a wide-gamut screen. The previews are not colour-managed and are usually very over-saturated. The border doesn't print as blue as it looks in the screengrab.