Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi,

Qimage newbie here.

I have a Canon ipf6100.  I've been using the Canon ipf plugin for Photoshop to do my printing, and have been getting excellent color correspondence between my
(calibrated) monitor and the prints.  I downloaded Qimage Ultimate Trial this evening and tried it because I have read so many good things about Qimage.
I set it up to have Qimage manage the colors, and pointed Qimage at the same profile I was using from Photoshop and printed an aRGB jpg.  Well, the colors are
distinctly off.  They are lighter and more saturated.  So much so I won't be buying Qimage if this is what I am stuck with.  Anybody have any suggestions for me?

Many thanks.

--Milt--

http://miltonbarber.com

Hi Milt,
It's all true  ;D
Tell us some more information please. Qimage is quite capable of producing accurate colours as any other colour management aware application as 1000's of users know already.

How have you set up Qimage? Give us a screen shot of the Job Properties bottom right on the main screen that shows the CM set-up.
How is you printer driver set? Another screen shot or detailed description please.
What exactly is this profile you are using, is it a "proper" icc profile made for the printer, paper, ink combination you are using, and not something specifically designed for that plugin.
Final question, has your Adobe RGB image got an embedded profile or the exif data tagged for such? To check, hover your mouse over the image thumbnail and read the dta in the Exif Hotbar under the thumbs. The last item will be the image colour space that Qimage is reading, if it's defaulted to sRGB there's no colour space data to read. Come back and we'll tell you how to override that.
Terry

Terry,

Thanks for your quick response.

The paper I'm using is Hahnemuhle Monet Canvas, and the profile is the one supplied by Hahnemuhle for this paper on my printer.

The image was saved out of Photoshop, so it certainly has an aRGB profile.  The hotbar shows "ICC: *Adobe RGB (1998)*"

Here's the job properties box:
http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/jobProp.jpg (http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/jobProp.jpg)

Here's four shots of the driver setup:
http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver1.jpg (http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver1.jpg)
http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver2.jpg (http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver2.jpg)
http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver3.jpg (http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver3.jpg)
http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver4.jpg (http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driver4.jpg)

Double CM was the first thing I thought of, but I don't see any setting in the driver to turn off CM.
Since I had first set up Qimage to do CM, I have been assuming that maybe something the Qimage-Driver
communication has told the driver not to do CM.

Any help would be appreciated.  I would like to join the "1000's" of happy Qimage users, but I've got
to have accurate colors first.

BTW, can images be inserted directly in this forum?  I don't see how to do it.

Thanks.

--Milt--

I have an ipf6300. On your driver page #2 under Color Mode..Select no color correction. You are double profiling. Under the color mode drop down you have 3 choices..Color, Monochrome, No color correction. That should help alot...

Mike

Mike,
Thanks for coming in on this, it saved me asking that as the next question  ;)
Milt,
One other thing, make sure you have the correct paper type is selected; the Hahnemuhle Monet Canvas profile data sheet should tell you which is the Canon equivalent to set.
Of course but you'll get 2 other benefits at least from using Qimage:
superb quality prints and no messing with re-sizing images, Qimage does all that for you.
The benefit of this forum where, as you've just seen, there's good advice and if one does not know, someone else is very likely to.
Oh, and there is a 3rd, print directly from raw, the latest improvements to raw processing make it a winner.  8)
Terry

I recently printed on Frederix Canvas 777 and wasn't sure which paper type to use. After some digging and asking at Frederix I used the Canvas Matt II. It worked very nicely. The paper mfg. will generally help you out. Good luck. Qimage is a fabulous print program, especially with that nice printer you have. You can really save on paper, do multiple sizes on different page sizes. Save job and layout settings. You don't have to resize any files or worry about print sharpening. Once you work with it for a little bit, ask questions here, you will wonder how you ever got along without it.

Mike

All this help is great -- thanks for that.

All this praise for Qimage is also good, and I'd like to become a happy Qimage user, but I do still have one minor
hurtle to get over, namely, on my driver, the color mode dropdown does NOT contain "No Color Correction".
The three choices are Color, Monochrome (Photo), and Monochrome.  Anybody have any idea where turning off
CM is located on this driver?

If its relevant, I'm on Vista Ultimate, and my driver version is shown here:
http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driverVersion.jpg (http://milton.barber.name/4dpr/driverVersion.jpg)

The driver is old, but it is what came with the printer.

--Milt--

There's a much later driver available on the Canon web-site http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0010467.asp
See attachment below.
Terry

Milt,
At great expense  ;D I downloaded and installed your driver on my Vista laptop.
The necessary setting is definitely there, it's not any different from most Canon printers.
See attached below:
Main Tab
Color Mode: Color
Color Settings button
Matching Tab
Set "OFF" in list

Hope that sorts you out.
Terry

Terry,

Yes, you are right.  Thank you very much.

In fact, I found that setting myself last night and got a good accurate print.  I'm in the middle of a rush job and didn't want to mess with installing
a new driver for now, but I did take another look at all the modes and found that one.  They certainly do seem to have tried to make it hard to
turn CM off, both by confusing terminology and by burying it deep.

Now all I need to do is to figure out some of the some of the other aspects of the Qimage interface and I think I will become a customer.

Thanks again.

--Milt--

The results you'll get will be well worth it, Milt.  Continue to browse these forums and you'll find plenty of testimonials from satisfied users.  And for some good examples, look up the "Qimage Challenges" thread.  Join the club!