I've used Qimage for about 2 years. I recently updated to the v1010.208 version of Qimage. After the update the color balance has become, in a word, wonky. I've re-calibrated and re-profiled the printer, A Z3100. The test pages come out fine, but at best prints made with Qimage come out under saturated and on average the prints are mostly de saturated. Any suggestions on troubleshooting this?

Thanks,

Justan

Hi Fred,

First thank you very much for such a detailed response!

Second, I appear to have been off the mark in my thinking. The timing for the color problems the printer is experiencing appears to have been coincidental with the timing of my recently installed Qimage update.

Based on your suggestion I found that printing from PS produces much the same results. As a further test I tried a different paper and used the HP provided tools to calibrate and profile the paper. This test HP produced far worse results than this test was performed using Hahnemuhle paper, a couple of days ago.

The “test” images are all .tif files that are only used for printing finished works. I have a print made from the the same image and paper that i made about 6 months ago. The current test print is a wonky example of a once great image.

I guess the next test is to install the HP print driver and Qimage on my notebook computer, and use this same image and paper. Then when it produces the same results I’ll have a clearer idea of the source of the problem….. which I'm now thinking is the printer itself. Gasp!

On updating QImage it is a good idea to reset all options (from the help dropdown) and then reenter all of your preferences again including the default color profiles for your monitor and printer (for your paper and ink type that you created) you wish to use. If you have QImage Pro or better, look at the soft proof on your monitor as well to compare it with the print.

On the lower right of the screen mouse over the Job Properties line and it will display the color profiles that are current for the monitor and printer.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/downloadable_1/DL_page.html

has a number of test targets you can download. I suggest the one with the four models in the bottom row and the gray scale on the right. Unzip it into a test folder, edit it just to resize it as you wish (I do 4x6) without any other adjustments and save it. Now you can load it into QImage to test its printing quality. It is also a decent target to check your display quality.

http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jns/files/Canon_ICC_Profile_Guide.pdf is a guide for Win and Mac users on setting up Canon printer drivers but the ideas can apply to other drivers as well.

Make sure you are not double profiling. If you have the ICC profile being used in QImage insure that it is not being used in the printer driver by setting any icm to off and color management to none. All you need to set is page setup and paper type in the driver. Any color sliders should be set to neutral.

Thank you for this excellent guide! To this point I've used Qimage exclusively to size and print and have always gotten great results. I checked and the profiles are appropriate. The monitor profile is consistent with the one used in PS and reflects the most recent calibration. The printer profile is set to let the printer manage colors.

I’ll definitely try some of the test prints.

I'm mystified as how the same tif file printed on the same paper only a few months apart can produce such drastically different results. Anyway the issue appears to be healing itself. If we hadn’t gotten a quarter inch of ice and then 4 inches of snow I’d go to get the colorimeter but the roadways look as if countless people simply abandoned their cars everywhere.