Hi Fred,

When Sigma produced the earlier dp1's and dp2's they worked closely with photoshop, and adobe bridge could open the files OK - debatable if they got the best out of the files, though. I'm not sure if they have done the same with the M's. Perhaps it works fine with the latest version's of bridge - it used to be free upgrades for bridge, iirc - not sure about now. cs5 is a few years old.

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi Fred,

sigma dpXM is 'M' for 'Merrill' - the inventor of the Foveon X3 sensor. So far there is a dp1M, dp2M, dp3M which all have the larger sensor area, compared with the earlier dp1, and dp2 cameras. As well as these fixed lens cameras, there are also slr's, but afaik all sigma foveon sensor cameras have a raw file extension of X3F, but it seems that only Sigma's own software is capable of reading all the raw files within the x3f type extension.

Best wishes,

Ray 

If you think about , it's amazing that this stuff works at all. Industrial printers, the ones that use printing inks on rolls of paper, offset litho, etc. are pretty/solid  heavy machines in order to maintain exact alignment of the colours, and they are working generally on single cut sheets. Newspaper printers - offset web for example, are massive. Even then, they do not need the accuracy of placement that we are talking about with our low cost equipment, since usually the paper is guillotined to size after printing. Our inkjets are built of pressed steel and plastic, but we still expect extreme accuracy in all conditions. Changes in temperature and humidity effects paper and other materials, which we often don't consider.

A back of an envelope very, very rough calculation gives some interesting figures. Printing a 6 metre length, with an error in feed roller alignment to result in less than 1mm variation from beginning to end of the 6 metres, means the roller axis must be perpendicular to the paper feed to within 0.01 of a degree. If the roller axis is adjustable, if it were a metre long, then it would need to be adjustable to within about 0.0001mm. (If it was adjusted by a simple screw of, say 1mm pitch, then could you turn it 0.0001 of a revolution?).

So, we rely on perfect, even width sheets or rolls of paper, being precisely fed through accurate guides set correctly (whatever that means - too tight, paper buckles/jams, too slack, paper skews).

Not saying that this is the cause of the problem here, but just saying that I think we sometimes may expect too much of of our gear, which generally has been built down to a price.

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi,

At first sight it looks like either the paper feed on printer is skewed, or qimage does something odd with queues and spacing (fp rounding errors?) in conjunction with printer driver. The first thing to do is to verify that the printer feeds are correct. The driver will most likely have settings for that. Then, print your image line with something basic, e.g. irfan view, a number of times, and check that it is consistently spaced from one edge - that should highlight the effect of paper feed wobble. (Instead,  I suppose you could instead print the inbuilt nozzle check images a number of times, and see if they are spaced the same from the edge of the paper). Then, without putting it in the queue in qi, print again, a number of times, see if wobble is the same. Then do it in the qi queue. if the error is only when in the qi queue, then that will be up to Mike to fix (try instead of mm, use inches, (whole numbers, not decimals) and don't worry about the centre, just need to check distance from edge is consistent- it may be an inch/mm thing.)

I think you have to try and isolate where the problem lies, hardware, software or paperware. I think, for most printers/papers, a half mm variation could be expected, but it looks as if your errors are accumulating. If it is hardware/paper, then you should be able to see where the edge of the paper is at start and end of the print run. (If the line is long enough, you may be able to measure the distance variation between top and bottom of line to edge).

Personally, I would not be bothered by a mm or two variation with roll canvas, but if at the end of of a run the error came to 5mm or so, then that could be a nuisance.

Best Wishes,

Ray

My version of pp (purchased August 2005) has a an IT.87.2-1993 target -printed on Kodak Professional Paper - made by Wolf Faust (www.coloraid.de) .I've not used it much recently, and it lives in the original packaging, in the dark, and still looks fine to me - although appearances can be deceptive 

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi,

My early version of profile prism lets you to edit the pp produced profile (but not others). Maybe worth a try.

Best wishes,
Ray

Hi Tim,

If you do 'ctrl I' over a thumbnail, you get the info box for the selected thumbnail. It shows the image resolution in Pixels. You can move over other thumbnails, and the info box shows the info for that image. Now, since QI is a better print engine than in PS, you may find that it prints pretty good at 100ppi - you can try it for yourself by selecting a thumbnail, and dragging it into the print queue, and adjusting its size in the page preview screen (or some other method) and you will see that the ppi changes in the print queue.  Print it and see if 100ppi is OK. Then, all you need do, when you 'ctrl I' over the thumbnails is divide the resolution value by 100, to give a quick ball park evaluation value of printability  .

I think that in general, when printing with QI, it is usual to select the size of print and let the ppi sort itself out. If you have different sized images with similar names, then you need to get an idea of which will be suitable for printing, so you need a 'rule of thumb' for the thumbnail images. For QI, I reckon 100 will be good enough.

Best wishes,

Ray

A gigabit switch.

Most google images are pretty small, so you will not be able to print them to any worthwhile size - it gives the dimensions for the images, anyway. Plus, I expect they make 'em small, because they will be copyrighted.

Best wishes,
Ray

Hi Paul,
Based on what you have said, there will be a bit of manual effort required to cross reference the photos to the spread sheet data. OpenOffice spread sheet allows images to be included, and from the school's point of view that alone probably would be worthwhile. Once they've put the images matched to the other data in some sort of order, with a bit of fiddling you can get a print of whatever you want to more or less any size or layout maybe by copying the data into a document and applying templates. Of course, it depends on the size of the data set - sometimes it takes far longer to find an 'automatic' solution, and then find it doesn't do what is needed, compared to just sitting down and getting on with manual 'cut and paste'.

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi Jeff,

In IV go to options-property/settings. Check you have that set so it doesn't try to open embedded thumbs.

Best wishes,

Ray

I would think you could strap the head in place with masking tape. Having searched around on the web on your behalf, it seems you shouldn't remove the ink cartridges - another reason for not upending it  .

Best wishes,

Ray

My understanding is that photoshop and some other programs anti-alias the display. This tends to hide the noise in the image, I guess their thinking is that often images are downsized and then the  noise disappears. However when you manipulate the image, (sharpen, add contrast, etc.) the noise increases. Since it is the display that is anti-aliased, the file itself will not be affected (except by sharpening, etc.) and will print OK.

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi Ed,

I can't give you any definitive reply wrt curl, but the canvases I've used are 'pretty floppy', they show no curl after passing through the printer from the roll, unlike most of the few roll papers I've used. However, if I wanted to do it with your printer, I'd  take the risk, buy the roll, and cut it as soon as possible, and store the sheets flat. If there was any curl, it would most likely be towards the core of the roll, and use those last, having had longer in the flat. I guess stiffness would also depend on the coating. One problem you may have, if you don't take care, is dust from the cutting on the surface of the canvas, or embedded in the texture - once you've got few streaky prints you'll remember  .

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi Ed,

I mentioned some time ago about cutting wider rolls down to 24inches, but that won't apply to you if you are starting with the correct width. Generally printers for canvas have a vacuum, to hold the material flat. However, folk have printed canvas on the 3800, but it seems hit and miss - see http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=15129 and elsewhere. I think your best option, before buying a whole roll would be to get a few samples to try, some will be better than others.

Best wishes,

Ray