Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I've been trying to use profile print for over four months her without success!!! Bought a new printer (Epson R1900, don't tell me this one is not a wide-gammut enough...!), a photo scanner (Epson Perfection 1660, I agree it's used, but does very good scan!) Bought a copy of VueScan and piles an piles of paper and inkjet cartridges later, I still get awfull results!!! If all of you are getting good results, I figure the problem ought to be between the chair and the computer, but can't figure it out.....

Here is, step by step, what I do:

Start from a calibrated screen (Spyder2). I'm running Vista Premium, 64 bits. In this case, let's say I'm trying to calibrate some "Red River Paper" Artic Polar Luster. I know profiles exist on the RR website, but I should be able to come close with Profile Prism, shouldn't I???

Print a 5x7 target with photoshop: select "Printer manages color", and in the printer I choose (as recommanded by RedRiver) Ultra Premium Photo Luster as paper, make sure I'm not printing High Speed (unckecked) I'm using the Gloss Optimizer (checked), selected ICM and checked the Off button (No Color Adjustments). I print the target. Let it dry overnight. I've been using the Bright target, incidentally.


Next day, I open VueScan, put the IT8 target on top, my printed output below and a piece of black cardboard over the whole thing. Within VueScan, I scan at 48 bits, 400DPI, Output is a Raw file, 48 bits, Raw compression off, and Raw size reduction =1. No filters are selected, and I understand that what is selected in the Color tab is irrelevant since we're using raw. I do three or four scans, and then use the last one.

Now, within Profile Prism, Device to profile  is Printer, Check that Reference Target is the same as my IT8 target, that Printer-Target-Bright is selected, and that in Initial Adjustments, everyting is set to Normal, no biases.  I open the .TIF scaned file, select the corners of the IT8 target and get "Image properly exposed", 4% While Balance accuracy, 3% lighting variance, only 2 patches at minimum/max brightness (the extreme white with a red X and extreme black with a black X on the gray scale at the bottom).

After selecting the corners of the target, I get Exposure 224, and 5 patches at minimum/maximum brightness. Both histograms look similar to those in the instructions. I click "Create Profile". I then get Paper Dynamic Range = 84.3, Lab space coverage = 16.3%, 1 pass smoothing, and all profile usable ranges 0-255.

Yet!

When I print using the generated profile, I get a wayyyyy over saturated print, with reds and greens in particular, and a neutral gray that is yellow-ish.

I know I can adjust those and I have been playing with the "Initial Adjustment " settings. I have come close, but nothing really close. I've tried to edit the profile, but what I'm getting is too way off to adjust one color at the time......

So!! What am I doing wrong? Any clues???

Hi Francois,
I do not think that is not correct. Targets must be printed with Colour management off completely but your driver settings are ok. I'm not familiar with printing with PS so cannot tell you how to set it so CM is "OFF".
Are you sure PS is set correctly for printing a normal print; "Printer manages color" will not be correct, you need PS to do that once the profile is set up.

One way to check your normal print set-up is to use Epson's own profile for your paper. Their standard profiles are always reliable, if you get over saturation with an Epson profile, then your set-up in PS is wrong.

Off your topic just a little but It's a pity you are not using Qimage to print, there is a specific set-up to recall within that for printing targets; all you then have to do is set the driver from within Qimage to what you show. Worth considering to get superior prints compared with PS, as well as being easy to control the colour management set-up  8)

Terry

I think Terry has it covered for you, but I need to ask you to try something.
The problem is that I know little about Printing from PS except that I printed a few shots froma friend's Photo Shop for a Qimage demo I am doing later this morning.
I remember the choices were, Let Printer Manage, Let Photo Shop manage color, and NO COLOR MANAGEMENT.

I was having a devil of a time trying to get a decent print out of PS and had to call a friend. (Sounds like Regis)
He told me to set PS print box to Let Photo Shop Manage Color, and the driver to No Color Management, and my printer profile selected below.
Worked fine.
The one marked NO COLOR MANAGEMENT says in the explanation when you hover the mouse, "Will not change color values in the document"
That sounds like the one I would select.

All that said, Why not download the free demo of Qimage and use the JOB that is designed for target printing. It sets all the parameters correctly for you. You only have to set the driver to NCA (No color Adjustment)

Click Recall, click the "J" button for job, and select the one for target printing, and OPEN.

BTW, that is a wonderful printer you bought!

Fred

Thanks for your reply guys.

Terry/Fred, you are correct: there is a "No color management" option in PS that I had not noticed. I just re-printed a target with it. We'll see after it dries. However, at first sight, it does not appear significantly different from the others I've printed. But we'll see.

Also, I've tried the demo version of Qimage, same problems.

Would you guys know why the full black and full white patches of the IT8 target always come up with an X??? Is this normal?

Do you mean you have problems in setting no CM? If you still have problems with setting Qimage please come back. But in the mean time, to print a target, go File/Recall click J for job and look for "{Q} printer target setup.job". It should be the only one there on a new install. Click Open and then double click the target thumbnail or drag to the page preview on the right hand side of the screen. Then click the print icon, top right.
I think it is, all the profiles I've done have at least those 2 with crosses. I seem to remember reading in the Help that it is normal.
Terry.

The images I print with the profile generated from Profile Prism have the same issues in PS or in Qimage

Hi Francois,

My two pence---

As in most things, there are many ways of getting it wrong, only a few in getting it right.

You mentioned 'Bought a new printer (Epson R1900.....etc' - I would suggest that you need to get familiar with that, and prove to yourself that prints you get from it will match, near enough, your vdu. You haven't given enough information to let me know that it is only problems with pp, maybe you are comparing accurate prints with an inaccurate monitor, or ambient lighting colour temperature does not match your scanner, maybe look at the prints in bright daylight, allowing a day for the ink to set.

My suggestion would be to buy some epson paper, similar to what you are trying to profile - matte or glossy, or whatever, and install the epson profiles for that paper. See if you get the prints to work right using that. It is absolutely essential to use the same print driver settings for printing as they suggest, at least when you start off. For example, if the profile is for 'high speed' you will get more ink laid down if you print in high quality driver settings. Personally, I find coarse matte paper and canvas tricky to profile with a scanner. I expect you are aware of this, but sometimes printer drivers seem to arbitrarily reset themselves. I would suggest you get that working first with your new printer, then you can confirm that your monitor profile, ambient lighting, rendering intent, nozzle jets, etc., are as they should be. If you did it a week ago, and it was OK, then rechecking would not be a bad idea. Once you can get a matching print, using a ready prepared profile, then you will have eliminated all those set-up problems when it come to printing other papers and your home made profiles.

Some folk say that the Epsons lay down too much ink, a few threads in this forum mention this, and how users overcome this type of problem. There are also some test images, with a known colour space. Make sure you use those, not the many ones with no colour space mentioned. Find ones that match the sort of photography you do - i.e one with skin tones is not too good if you specialise in landscapes. For all I know it may be simply you are assigning colour spaces, instead of converting them in PS.

At the end of the day, it is all pretty subjective, unless you are in the 'print business' since your final image may look great in daylight, but hung on a wall indoors, under artificial lighting you see no shadow details and the perceived colours have shifted. Also, of course, working in pro photo colour space in PS, can give weird printing results, since the way in which out of gamut colours are rendered on vdu may be different than for print, since vdu and printer gamut are different, and other reasons.

Anyway, stick with it, within a couple of weeks you will get it sorted, and always remember, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it  :)

Best wishes,

Ray

Hy Ray,

Thanks for your input. And I just want to say thay maybe my answer will look defensive, it is not.... I just want to say what I've been doing in the hope I will be found wrong somewhere......  ???

First off, I should say I'm getting good results with Epson paper with Epson ink using Epson's preset. I have purchased PP to depart from manufacturer's paper, which I though (from everything I've read around) was possible. And I calibrate my monitor before every attempt at defining a new profile... I've ben caught before.....  So since I'm getting a "match" print with this, I assume my workflow is ok, or should I???  ???

I'm sticking to glossy and semi-gloss paper. I've heard that the R1900 is not all that great with matte paper and, in any case, my photo clients all want glossy or semi-gloss. And I have to say that I really like the quality (and the price...) of the Redriver paper. They have great profiles too, so what I'm doing with you guys is to try to at least come close to those, as an exercise to learn what I'm doing wrong while using Profile Prism. Once I master Profile Prism, I'll be more adventurous with other papers.

Thanks for the "High Speed" vs other. Will remember this and make sure it consistent.

I'm using the PP supplied test image, as well as Bill Atkinson's Lab Test image to check colors.

Could you explain a bit more about prophoto? I'm using Adobe RGB, but I know that Lightroom works with Prophoto (although I'm testing everything from Photoshop, I'd like to use the profiles with Lightroom as well, eventually... when it works.....)

You'd better read Mike September 2009 article first  ;)
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/september-2009-digital-photography-reality-check-308/
and if you want great prints, read Mike's March article  ;D
Terry

Hi Francois,

Good, you are almost there, I guess. A year or three ago, on Fred Miranda's forum, there was an excellent article on colour management, and photo editing wrt photoshop. I looked for it a few month's ago, but was unable to find it. The author explained the advantages and snags in editing in pro-photo - a very wide gamut, 16bit colour space. The major advantage was the lack of banding which can occur if editing in an 8 bit space, a disadvantage being you had little idea what was happening outside of your monitor colour space (and at the time, iirc, some ps stuff did not work in prophoto). Of course, it depends on what processing you want to apply to your images, if the gain is worth the pain. If you are not into 'precise' image adjustment, if time does not allow, then I guess the next best thing is to stick with, say, adobe rgb throughout, maybe the 16bit version will eliminate many of the banding problems anyway.

However, wrt out of gamut, I have posted here before, a link to colour charts generated in prophoto colour space. You can load them into ps, set the out of gamut highlighting, then see how much of the pro photo colour space will be visible in any icc profile you care to test it against. It is not just a question of the printer gamut being smaller (or bigger) than your monitor colour space, but where it is sort of offset. You compensate for these issues by setting your rendering intent. You also have to be aware that the average monitor works to an srgb colour space, smaller than adobe, and corrections are made to the darker colours, since monitors do not display a black too well. However, your printer does print black pretty good (but not white - white is the colour of your paper and maybe ambient light reflections, usually).

PP also gives a smaller colour space than a profile prepared with better equipment. Mike has given his reason's for that somewhere, possibly in one of his articles. You could check that with one of the profile viewers, if you did a pp profile on your existing epson paper and compare it with the one provide by epson, the one that works for you. If you then view the pro photo charts with the gamut warnings for your own generated and the epson generated profiles, you may be able to see the difference in size and location between the two.

Having said all this, pp generates profiles good enough in most cases, certainly much better for glossy papers  than textured, and unless you are being very picky, I suspect there is something obvious (after we see what is causing it) that you/we are unaware of.

I guess you've cleaned the scanner glass, let it warm up for half an hour or so? I tend to scan the images three or four times, then use the last image. I use the 'bright' test print. If you have 'double profiled' your monitor e,g, left the adobe default settings and added the new, or have fallen into the mess that is w7, then it will be more difficult for you to sort it out.

Once you have set the profile, it should make little difference to the colour quality you get for the print whatever software you use to print from, unless you add some differences between the print work flows, such as sharpening or resizing.

I think you should not try changing what you are used to wrt editing, adobe, or whatever, until we have sorted out your pp problems. A good start would be for you to prepare a profile for your existing Epson paper, and compare that with the Epson profile. You are starting then from a known position, and I am fairly certain that there are others here with the same paper, who may well profile it on their scanner, so that if your results are not good, they can see what their results are like.

Best wishes,

Ray

added  link to pro photo charts part way down http://ddisoftware.com/tech/printers/prophoto-workspace-with-epson-9900-profiles/msg4673/#msg4673

Did it again with the scan I printed this morning (with color management off). Worst results than this a.m.

Just to give you an idea, I have attached a scanned version of the printout I get using the profile, vs the print I get using the RedRiver Paper profile which is pretty much right on what I have on screen. They're only 100dpi, but is should give you an idea.

Is there a significant difference when printing with Perceptual vs Relative colorimetric? I don't see much difference, should I???

In reviewing your post with your settings, I came across the above.

This is incorrect!
The target image needs to be printed at its native size; 5.77 x 7.92 @ 390 ppi
Please recheck that.

Fred

Francois,
May I suggest you double check your CM settings, not just for target printing but for making the test print too.
To spell it out:
OK. for printing the target, CM must be OFF and the driver set to ICM and ICC Profile OFF (No Colour Adjustment) = Epson terminology.
However, for printing the test print CM must be ON with the printer profile selected and the driver EXACTLY THE SAME as it was for the target print, including the paper type choice. The latter is also significant for both target and test print.
I may be stating the obvious but it needs to be said and checked  ;)

Another point, and this may disappoint you, not all scanners are good for making profiles  :o
I use a Canon 8400F, it's ok but the profiles are not always as good as I would like, shadow areas are the problem but colour are usually ok.
Perhaps there's someone on the forum who uses an Epson like or similar to yours who can comment.
I'm sure, somewhere in the PP help or on the web pages, Mike recommends the Canon Lide series for profile making. They use 3 colour (RGB) LED's. The basic models are cheap and do a good job.
Terry

Fran,
Any chance you could do a screen snap of the histogram and the color curves from Profile Prism when you make the profile?

Fred

I use an Epson V500 to generate the scans for PP. This scanner uses an LED light source - not sure what the 1600 uses. I also have a Canon LiDE 200 but think my PP profiles from the Epson V500 make better prints, have better histograms and fewer Xs. My printer is the Canon Pixma Pro 9000 Mk II presently using Canon OEM inks (will eventually use IS inks in this printer when I get empty cartridges for refilling - new profiles of course). I am profiling Red River Ultra Pro Luster paper. I found that the Red River profiles for my printer gave a much darker print than I wanted. My PP profiles for my equipment combo (in XP Home SP3) are very good in my eyes. The initial profile does have a slight blue-green tint that I edit out with the PP profile editor. The print exposure is right on in the original profile. Target is printed from Qimage using the included target printing settings and CM turned off in the printer. My scanning is done with VueScan set to 4 passes per scan, 48 bit scan, 300 dpi and RAW output. Good histograms and few Xs. Also get good profiles on Staples Premium Matte paper using this setup. Monitor (Dell 2209wa) is calibrated with an I1D2.
I personally think your problems are with the scanner. Even though your histograms and number of X's are good, the scanner light source could be causing the color shifts.

Steve W.

Sorry guys, didn't have the time yesterday to do screen print-outs, I was on a production deadline.

For the Scanner, I used a Canon scanner, an HP Scanner and the best results (in terms of numbers) I'm getting from the Epson scanner.

I will post histograms and also try to see if I can find saturation and color settings in the initial screens of PP that could correct scanner lighting issues. However, by having tried this before, you sort of have to do this for every paper you profile....  ???

Eureka! (ehh.... I think.....)

After reading what you guys have said about the quantity of ink vs type of paper on Epson printers, I have tried yesterday printing a target using a different paper setting than the one recommended by the manufacturer.

i.e. Red River recommends using the "luster" paper with their "Artic Satin Luster" paper. I have printed a target using the "Semi-Gloss" paper in the printer dialog, on the same RR paper.

And you know what? It ain't bad at all....!!!! The Lab test print came out about just right, yellow in the grays, just a little bit oversaturated in the yellows.

Now, I'm wondering two things:

1. Should I "edit" the profile and change the yellows? When I select, say, a yellow flower, how wide the range of yellow gets selected? Precisely just this flower's yellow? Should I try playing with the initial settings before creating the profile and add some blue? What's the compromise/advantages of each? I know that the initial settings will affect the whole profile, but what I'm not sure is how narrow or wide is the editor's selection

2. Is this going to work when I try other papers, or is it going to be a question of fiddling again.....  ::)

Good news then  ;D
Some large format "pro" printers have a driver adjustment for the amount of ink but on many models, the only way is to use different paper settings. I think the rule is: more glossy, less ink and visa versa so matte paper uses the most ink. In your case, semi gloss uses less ink than lustre.
I would say yes to that rather than trying to tweak things before making the profile, especially as you are getting very close now. The edior enables you to see and compare 2 images side by side. One is the "screen" image, as it should like like in print; the other represents the print and is the one that shows your adjustments. The aim is to get the "print" image to look like the test print with its errors. PP then adjusts the profile to correct the errors. It sort of works backwards from normal image editing.
The editor includes colour wheel and you can see which segment of the wheel into which a selected colour falls. I don't think you need worry about which precise grade of yellow it is, just have a go. I found it takes some practice so be prepared to use some ink & paper  :o
Probably  :-\
You may need to ignore the RR paper type recommendation, and work one step towards glossy as a starting point.
Keep us up to date, others will find your learning curve helpful too  ;)
Terry.
PS. Don't forget to set your driver as per the new paper settings when printing. I'll say it again, use Qimage so you can save every single print set up so you don't have to remember the detail.

Hi Francois,

As Terry says, but if you aren't using Qimage to print then you will have to write down the vales of your driver settings, etc. My version of PP is quite old, but the help file therein is excellent, there is quite a lot of info. on why to adjust the first cut profile, and a section on the effect of metamerism, which is probably a factor in your initial unsatisfactory results. Of course, it is a bit unrealistic to expect a relatively old/low cost scanner and low cost profiling software to produce the same results as specialist equipment costing ten or twenty times as much, but with careful tweaking you will get it near enough in many instances. fwiw, I've never found 'soft proofing' to be much use wrt colour accuracy, but others obviously use it.

Best wishes,

Ray