Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi all,

I just started my printing jobs using the SE version, but I am getting very poor results.

There is a shift from normal skintone to a purple cast tones and the whites are printing out grey.  Overall the print is also much darker than it should be.  The same files loaded onto a flashcard through Lightroom print ok at our local CVS Kiosk.


I was using the trial version previously, and it was without any issues, but I can't seem to figure out where I have gone wrong.  Any help is appreciated. 

Check your colour management settings in both Qimage & driver.
And the obvious check but often ignored: the nozzles!   :o  One or more colour could be blocked, run a check and clean as required.
Terry.

Thank you for the reply Terry.

I ran a nozzle check as you suggested, and it appears the printer (an Epson R1800) is good.

I have attached a screenshot of my settings.

Sorry Terry,  file was too large for one post.
These are the Qimage settings.

Sorry to butt in, but I don't see Terry around today as yet.
I cannot open the WPS file. It is something that I believe needs MS works.
The DOC file is OK. I can see that you have no printer profile being used.
Since I have an R 1800 and I know that profiles are free downloads from Epson, you should have them available on your computer.
I don't know what type of paper you have either.
Your driver must be set to No COLOR MANAGEMENT. It also must reflect the correct paper choice. Best Quality!

Then insert the correct profile in Qimage for the paper and printer. I will attach a screen snap of both of I can.

Fred

Thank you Fred, and Terry.

I am at work and will be back this evening, and I will do that.

Thanks again, very much.

WORK? At WORK?
You will never learn Qimage if you have to waste so much time at work!

 :o :o  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

You won't learn Windows 7 either, at work or hanging about at home.  ;D ;D ;D ::)
Terry

Ha, ha, ha.  I have no intention of learning Windows 7 until they pry XP from me with a crowbar.  Work...I know, I know, it gets in the way...critical need had me doing 14 hrs a day for the past 2 days, (critical need = buy food, pay bills and quarterly taxes). :P

But I finally made it into the studio.

I Use Epson Premium Photo Paper Glossy (4 star), and Kodak Premium Photo Paper 8.5 mil Gloss/Brilliant.

First, I want to thank you Fred and Terry for your help.  The screen shots helped a great deal Fred.  I made a couple of changes: I made sure I set the printer driver to no color management, Best Photo, and Premium paper Glossy.  I also changed Qimage to reflect the monitor profile from a Pantone Eye-One Display 2, and the Qimage paper setting to Epson Premium Paper Glossy.icc.  It made a significant difference, I have much better colors but the colors are still off on the skintones and the prints lighter but are still too dark.

To check the system, I loaded the same files onto a CF card, plugged it directly into the printers card slots, and printed on both an HP - Photosmart Compact Photo Printer Model: A646, and an HP - Photosmart Printer Model: D7560.  The prints were outstanding in all aspects from these printers, although very costly in ink...getting around 35 4x6 prints per $24 cartridge on the A646.

I am sure the R1800 can outdo these printers, but I am still missing something.

If the prints are too dark compared to the monitor, it may be the monitor is set too bright. It could affect the skin tones too.
Terry

I had the same thought as I just finished reading http://ddisoftware.com/tech/computer-hardware/dell-u2410-calibration/?topicseen

But I get a real good monitor to print match with the HP's, do you think it could still be related to the monitor calibration and profile?

That is not colour managed of course and the printer may adjust the image when you just load it from a flash card  ???
The monitor profile will not have an effect on the print, but just how the image appears on the screen.
My Eye One 2 Display software (IMatch 3) allows me to set a target luminance in Advanced mode, does yours?
BTW. what rendering intent are you using with the printer profile?

To eliminate the printer profile, why not set Qimage to "Let Driver Manage Colour" in the printer profile drop-down. Use "ICM, Applied by Printer Software" in the driver. Try a print and see how that comes out; this method uses a generic profile that does a good job in most cases. If that does not work, there some other problem I would think.
Terry

El J,
I have an idea if you think you could do this.
If you could email one image to me (the exact one from which you are using to print) and then I will have the answer for you; or at least get a grip on the cause of the problem.
How about it?
Either wathree.ssz@verizon.net  or Fred.auerbach@gmail.com

Hoping!!
Fred

I do understand that the monitor profile is not related to the process other than the softproofing and my desire for the print to closely match it, although the print to monitor match from plugging my CF card directly into the HP Photosmart printers is really very close, and I would be pleased if I could get this from the R1800.

I use a SyncMaster 245T, and I can set target luminance in advanced mode as well.  I was using perceptual for the rendering intent.

I reset the Qimage Job Properties Prtr ICC to "Let printer/driver manage color".  The R1800 Properties were set to Premium Photo Paper Glossy, (I use Epson Premium Glossy paper), Best Photo, ICM is on, ICM Mode is Driver ICM (Advanced).

I did get slightly better results, but unfortunately I would still call the print quality poor.

There must be something going on that we are not aware of  ???
Why not take Fred up on his offer and send him an image.
Terry

Thanks Terry, I have sent him an image.

Just to bring some of the thread up to date as others are following too, I printed your image to Epson Prem Glossy and again to Ilford Gallerie Smooth Gloss.
Both prints are perfect. Your shot is excellent. I see as clearly as can be: The trousers (where you said was dark and no detail) have a stripe and wrinkles. The dress is white as can be without being blown out for detail. The dress looks gray? If anything, it's a skinch overexposed, lots of detail in the lacey part, but a spot here and there on the border of being blown out, so certainly no gray dress.
Again I harp on the driver settings because if we have the same printer, same image, same ink, same paper, and same software, and you do not have some filter turned on like a print filter that you made and have checked the box, bottom right of Qimage, then we must get the same prints.
If we don't, and yours are messed up being too purple, too dark and bad flesh color, we have to suspect the nozzles.


ElJay,
You give me concern when you print with Prtr ICC turned to OFF.
That's where the printer profile goes, and so that the profile is in control of the color, we turn off any interference to the color by the driver by checking NO COLOR ADJUSTMENT.
I am certain that you have something not set right.
Let's drop any reference to the monitor because at this point we are actually looking at prints on paper, right?
I don't mean to sound snippy, but believe me I have been down this road before where the person I was helping never actually made a print to paper. He was comparing soft proofs.
That wont fly.
We are printing to paper.
Do you have the quality set to Best Photo?
You have selected the correct paper in the driver?
You see 720 x 720 above the upper right panel  where it says page size?
Don't dismiss the ink nozzles as not being clogged even though you get a visible pattern on a test. The prints that you like were made on different printers.
Let's work this through.

Fred

ElJay,
You kindly allowed Fred to forward your image to me too and I printed on Epson Premium Glossy with the Epson profile. I also printed on Ilford Smooth Gloss with a custom profile.
This was on an Epson R800 which has exactly the same ink set as the R1800 - genuine Epson inks of course!

I concur with Fred's conclusions totally, same results, and we're a few 1000 miles apart too ;D
Terry.

With water on that few thousand miles apart!!   :D

Eljay,
I mailed the prints to you this morning.
I hope you will get them by Monday or Tuesday.
I send stuff to Terry in the UK and it gets there in 4 days...

Let us know what you think.
Fred

I thought it was necessary, if using a profile, that the printer driver settings had to be the same as when the profile was prepared. That includes settings other than those referring to the 'managing' of the icc profile. I would guess that maybe there is a setting for epson papers, somewhere, within the epson profile descriptions. I can't recollect any mention of whether absolute/perceptual, and the paper/quality and so on. (I can't see the op's screen/driver shots.) There is plenty of opportunity to set something wrong. Too  many assumptions being made.

Best wishes,

Ray

You are correct!
The driver is to be set the same as it was when the profile was created; but that is why we are insisting that he use the PGPP paper in the driver, No Color Adjustment in the driver, and Best photo Quality (which is the 1440 dpi output selection).The rendering intent is usually a suggestion, but not a rigid must!

So effectively, it turns out simple.
Select the correct paper from the list in the driver.
Set to Best Photo
Set to No Color Adjustment.
The profile is selected within Qimage.... Bingo!
The most difficult part is to download the profile package for your printer, and to know the names of the profiles so you don't choose one of those EE_233.icc profiles.
His profiles all start with SPR1800.
Then Print!  No softproof judgements.

Once we get excellent prints for LJ, then we can discuss the quality settings for RPM, and rendering intent and what to expect!

Fred

I've had a look at the files that Eljae sent - the second qimage shot shows resolution of 753 ppi, if I squint at it. I thought ist should be 720? It will be laying down more ink, I guess, than it should.

When borderless is set in the driver, the reported resolution is increased due to the expansion/overspray created by the driver.
I assume that is the case here; I don't think is effects the density of ink that is laid down.
Terry

Hi Terry,

Its in the qimage settings - res for normal print (and poster) it looks like odd values there - I've just checked and max is 720. (I've the r1800 also) having selected borderless in the printer driver, that value stays the same - it is the native dot resolution of printer.

This is where Eljae has refernced his settings

Set borderless in the driver and you get a bigger value - it comes from the driver, not Qimage.
If it is 753,, which I doubt, it is an odd number. Max expansion for borderless on my R800 gives 740 ppi.
Terry

Its in the qimage settings - res for normal print (and poster) it looks like odd values there - I've just checked and max is 720. (I've the r1800 also) having selected borderless in

the printer driver, that value stays the same - it is the native dot resolution of printer.

Ray,
If you have borderless checked and have selected a paper type that is supported in Borderless mode, the ppi will grow.
Tell the driver you have 5 x 7 premium glossy and tick the borderless and OK out of it.
You will see 753 
Terry was right on 8.5 x 11 paper... 741 ppi

Fred

Ah, right, got it now. But how does that fit with the native printer resolution of 720dpi, particularly with resizing?  Anyway, going a bit away from the op's problem,  I expect, so best sort that out first.

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray, I'm not sure of your question... above.
As I understand it, the input ppi, is controlled by the driver.
If you say BEST Photo and you select from a selection of photo papers, the driver wants 720 ppi.
If you change to plain paper, the driver's request will be 360 ppi
So if we boil it down, the driver is saying, Hey if you want me to cover that page with the best quality, I need 720 ppi fed to me.
This gets complicated due to various ways the printers try to accomplish borderless.
Best bet, Ray, is to read Mike's article; http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/march-2005-size-matters-paper-size-vs-print-size/
on printing borderless.
You will see how the print size is actually enlarged and prints to the edge and past the edge of the paper.... and that's why the driver is asking for a few more ppi.
Read the whole article, of course, but the borderless part is about half way down.
Fred

I should add, (because I have nothing else to do anyway) that most of the larger Epsons like the 3800, 4000, 4800 and 7800 etc, default to 360 ppi. (You can select 720 in the bigger printers by going into "Quality, and putting a check in FINEST DETAIL. That will cause the printer driver to request 720 ppi. Comes in handy.)
The correct assumption being that you are probably going to print a large print maybe roll paper, and 360 ppi is plenty since you aren't going to look at the pring from a foot away from it.
The file size that will be sent to the spool will be huge anyway, but at 720 ppi it will be 4 times larger.
You might reach the limit of your computer resources.
Here's an interesting doo dad. Suppose you had stitched together a group of panorama shots and the image size was really huge ( 24,000 x 3400), and when going to print this at 720 ppi, the print file was over the limit. All you need to do is tick the little arrow next to Resolution Printer lower right area of Qimage's main screen, and change the 720 to 360.
That's why Poster below Resolution Printer already says 360...
It suspects that your poster will be large and will be happiest with 360 ppi.

Fred

Hi Fred, thanks for the link. The way that printer drivers handle borderless printing seems to be a bit of a botch, imnsho, probably added as an afterthought, and the interface/settings seem illogical. You have to beat your head around what it wants to do, in order to get it to do what we want it to do.

Best wishes,

Ray

I think most drivers use a similar technique for borderless.
Of course, you can disable the driver expansion in Qimage  :) but the increased printer resolution still appears in Qimage.

But this is all "fill-in" until Eljae gets back and tells us how he is getting on  ;)
Terry.

Hi Everyone,

I have some very encouraging results.

To Fred and Terry, I am very grateful to you both for your patience and expert advice.  Because of your help, I am now getting excellent prints.  Here is what I did to achieve the final results:

I began by creating a new custom ICC printer profile for the paper and ink I am using with the xRite ColorMunki.  I selected this profile in the Qimage Prtr ICC.

I recalled the new custom printer profile in the printer driver advanced window which quickly placed all the R1800 settings as follows: Premium Photo Paper Glossy, Best Photo, and the appropriate paper size is easily changed.  In the printer driver Advanced settings, Color Management ICM was selected , and OFF (No Color Management) was selected.

Flesh tones are now excellent.  Detail in both whites to blacks is now highly visable and contrast is excellent.

I am now anxious to compare my prints to the prints you are sending Fred.  I will keep updating as things happen.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Fred and Terry!!!

Judging by your comment above, do we conclude you were using the wrong profile or wrong paper and profile?
Regardless, happy you have some pleasant results.
The prints were mailed on Thursday morning, so I guessed at Mon or Tues you getting an envelope ...

Fred

Sounds like good stuff is coming from the ColorMunki. I'll be interesting to hear how other prints look from that profile with different images.
Pleased to help, we don't like a mystery  ::)
Terry

Yes Fred, it was a combination of setting errors in Qimage and the printer driver, as well as the profiles that I downloaded from Epson being not great but just Ok.

Actually, after getting the settings correct but using the Epson downloaded profiles I made several prints and showed them to a few people.  They all had very good remarks about the pictures.  I suppose I am just much more critical.

But from your posts and Terry's posts I began to understand the flow of information from file to print.  So I went back to square one and built new custom profiles, followed you and Terry's instructions, and in the end what I got  was very "pleasant results", I would even go as far as to say "WOW what a difference "results.

I am anxious to see your prints though. 

I haven't always been a fan of the ColorMunki, because there were some software issues, but XRite sent several patches and I am satisfied with its performance, for the moment anyway.

Much thanks again to you and Fred.

There is on small issue that I am facing.  I get a message that:

The current print range contains posters that have only a small strip that will be printed on some poster panels (less than an inch wide or tall).  If you intended to print a poster, you might want to double check your poster size to make sure that there is a benefit to printing this small "sliver" at the edge or bottom of your poster.  If you did not intend for your prints to cover more than one page, you should go back and reduce the size of your prints so that they do not exceed the printable area on one page (listed above the small preview page on the main window).

It appears that setting "fit to page" in the Qimage print properties will remedy this issue.

Are you printing a poster?
Do you want your print to coverr multiple sheets of paper?
If not, Qimage is telling you that you are requesting a print size that is larger than the printable area of the paper.
The simplest way is to request fit to page.
Crop scissor on... and you will get the largest print that will fit.

Assuming that you got this message from Qimage and not color Munki :)
Fred

Eljae-

Are you using the half-sheet profile sheet from xrite to read for making your profile or the full thing with the hundreds of colors?

ColorMunki has it's own special set of patches to print and scan. The patches are not even rectangular.
You can refine a profile by scanning an area of "real" print where the colours are not correct and the software will make a special set of patches, based on the scan, to refine the existing profile. Neat I thought, I have a friend who's got one.
Terry

Hmmmm, maybe it IS worth the upgrade.  Not like they give you a trade-in though.

Thanks Fred.  Yes, it was from Qimage, not printing a poster, (I was attempting to print 5x7's, 8x10's and 13x19's)...and I did request fit to page with Crop scissor on to remedy the issue but I get a pretty wide border now.

Just guessing, but there are 2 sheets with about 50 on each.

That is right on the money Terry, and it is exactly what I did!

Eljay,
Good morning!
If you got wide borders, then you likely have turned off the auto crop.
The only time Qimage will give you a warning is when you have (example) asked for a 5 x 7 print and are using 5 x 7 paper. The printable area of the 5 x 7 paper is 6.77 x 4.76.
So you can easily see that a 5 x 7 print will not fit.
So it asks you,  are you sure you wanna use more than one sheet of paper?

I have a feeling that you are forgetting to tell the print driver that you changed paper size.

Fred

Good Morning Fred,

That darn autocrop again...I''ll get it right one of these days.

By the way Fred, my prints are coming out the best they have ever been...

Much Thanks!

You couldn't do without it though  ;D

And all with that ColorMunki  printer profile?  :P
Terry

I just got to remember to check it.

Maybe, but it might be a lot of other things too.  I am thinking that the print really starts when you snap the shutter.

Fred, your 8x10's arrived, and they are excellent.  There is a slightly more vibrant color to the fleshtones and wood than I am getting, but my prints are nearly identical and I am going to optimize some more with the ColorMunki.  I would say this issue is solved.

Thank you again.

My pleasure....
You realize that the Epson print (see back of print) was made using the Epson profile for the PGPP paper, and the Ilford prints were made using the Ilford profile.
If you are going to monkey with the Munki, I suggest you try to match the prints I sent you.

 :D
Fred

I will take that advice (gotta' keep that Munki off my back) :D