OPTIMISTIC PRINTING - PETER SPRING
In an effort to economise on home printing costs, Peter has embarked on a voyage of discovery with alternative technologies and learnt a lot along the way. He gave us the benefit of his experience;
Starting with an Epson R2400 he installed a Permajet Continuous Inking System (CIS) which utilises larger bottles mounted alongside the printer and pipework to replacement dummy cartridges mounted on the printer head. This was successful for a few months but then suffered air bubbles in the lines which proved difficult to eradicate. This echoes the experience of several other members who have ultimately abandoned CIS's due to unreliability.
Peter then upgraded to an Epson R3000 which utilises a form of inherent CIS with larger ink cartridges mounted in the printer body and pipework to the head. Whilst the cartridges are larger and a little cheaper, they are still expensive (approx £3 per A3 print) and in the eternal quest for economy he next purchased a set of Fotospeed refillable cartridges. He then embarked upon an RPS panel and encountered baffling colour casts on his mono prints. This was eventually traced to the fact that he was replacing the Epson cartridges one by one as they ran out. The consequent mix of Epson and Fotospeed inks was causing a serious incompatibility. There is a complex chemical process between ink and paper and the ink must be carefully matched to the paper. Generally, third-party papers work with same-brand ink or with Epson ink but not in any other combination. Subtleties such as dot gain, drop formation, print head corrosion, pH level, fade resistance and colour brilliance all come into play in the ink-paper compatibility equation.
Having got to the root cause of his problems, Peter is now very happy with his R3000 and Fotospeed refillable ink cartridges.
Having spent a lot of time and effort talking to Permajet, Fotospeed and Marrutt, Peter came to the conclusion that Marrutt would be receiving the benefit of his credit card in future as they were exceptionally helpful & knowledgeable. Some other gems that he learnt along the way were;
- the 'high speed' setting prints in both directions of head movement and may not produce repeatable results
- the 'Relative Colorimetric' Rendering Intent setting is recommended
- a Quality setting of 4 or higher is recommended
- set the Epson driver to the recommended Epson paper type even when using third-party papers, as this affects the height of the head above the paper and other factors which influence print quality
- be very critical of your print (eg for banding, pixellation, rich blacks, fully saturated colours and natural flesh tones) because the RPS will be!
- use daylight or a 5000K viewing light for assessing prints (note that normal daylight flourescent tubes emit a narrow frequency and are not the same as true daylight or SAD tubes)
- generic profiles from the paper manufacturers are good but custom profiles for your own printer are better and they should be repeated every few months
- perform a nozzle check regularly. Printing a full-colour test print a couple of times may be preferable to running a head clean sequence
- reference prints available from reputable manufacturers can be used to check your printer output
- profile your monitor periodically using the club's ColorMunki or an equivalent colorimeter
Finally, here are a series of Marrutt video presentations that tell you more than you could ever possibly find out for yourself on aspects of home printing;
1. A two-part presentation to Steyning Camera Club
2. A fourteen part (!) video masterclass
……..totalling some 8 hours of fun, in all.
Thanks Peter for an excellent insight into your printing 'journey'.
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Printing via a printer profile is an essential step in achieving good quality, consistent results. It’s not optional! Download the detailed recipe from the Digital Group page of the APS Website.
APS Members have raised a couple of printing issues in recent weeks;
ONLINE PRINTERS AND PROFILES
DS Colour Labs recommend that customers utilise the colour profiles provided on their website prior to using their online printing service. These can be used to soft-proof (ie simulate), in Photoshop, the results that can be expected from their Fuji printers. Any necessary adjustments to the image can then be made and the final step in the process is to convert the image to this profile before sending it off for printing.
Unfortunately Photoshop Elements users can't adopt this process because Elements does not support soft proofing and furthermore only supports profile conversion between sRGB and Adobe RGB colour spaces. All is not lost however because DS Colour Labs also support images received with the sRGB colour space and this should produce perfectly good results. Any variation (eg slightly light prints) should be consistent and can be allowed-for during the image preparation process.
HOWEVER - and this is a big caveat - your screen must be profiled using the club's ColorMunki (or equivalent) or else you are likely to get a big difference between your screen and the printed results. Screens are set to be bright and colourful out of the box - this is not what we want for photography. Don't come to me with colour issues if you haven't taken this essential step!
An alternative approach is to shop around for another printing service which better matches your home set-up. Not all expect colour profiles to be utilised. Simlab Bonusprint and Snapfish have all been used by our members.
MONOCHROME SHADOW DETAIL
Another member raised issues with a lack of monochrome shadow detail on his Epson Stylus Photo R3000 printer - a printer capable of excellent black and white. Printing a mono step-wedge test file (attached below) revealed that as many as 20 of the darkest tones were pure black! This was using 'Printer Manages Colours' in the Photoshop driver and Advanced B&W Photo option on it's default 'Darker' setting in the Epson driver. Changing the setting to 'Normal' improved the situation and only about 5 of the darkest tones were then black. Another successful approach was to use the regular colour paper profile - as though printing a normal colour image - which produced a similar result with only about 5 of the darkest tones being lost. Doing this is also a good test of the profile because if the resulting image is not neutral grey then the profile is inaccurate. Using the Advanced B&W Photo option of course means that Epson paper is being assumed by the printer driver. If you are using another brand of paper and this doesn't produce a good result, you should definitely adopt the regular colour paper profile.
Bear in mind that the downloadable profiles from paper manufacturers are generic and the quality companies offer a custom profiling service - sometimes free of charge. Don't hesitate to use this if you are having problems. The club's ColorMunki can also profile printers as well as screens (and projectors).
Cheers, Steve