Paper talk (again!)

[KJ Smith]

Great, are we going to incorporate that into the Valerie deal, or have a separate event.

Kevin

[studiocygnet]

I'm using in order:
Hahnemühle Bamboo Fine Art
Red River Greenpix
Epson Velvet Fine Art

but it's all matte all the time.

[KJ Smith]

Hey, I asked that in the other thread. Thanks for the info, I have sampler pacts that have everything but the epson.

The Greenpix is a warm-tone ?

Kevin

[venchka]

Greenpix should be in the sample box. One more potentially nice paper too thick/stiff for the HP printer.

It's a conspiracy.

[studiocygnet]

Originally Posted by KJ Smith

Hey, I asked that in the other thread. Thanks for the info, I have sampler pacts that have everything but the epson.

The Greenpix is a warm-tone ?

Kevin

The Greenpix is just slightly on the warm side of neutral and is smooth, while the Bamboo is really warm with a bit of texture. The Epson Velvet has the most texture, so it's only good for a few specific images.

[KJ Smith]

Is it me or do the RR profiles bleed in to much magenta ?

When I use the similar Epson profile I get better results.

I am using a 2200 printing B&W

Kevin

[studiocygnet]

Originally Posted by KJ Smith

Is it me or do the RR profiles bleed in to much magenta ?

When I use the similar Epson profile I get better results.

I am using a 2200 printing B&W

Kevin

Yeah, I did some tests with the Red River profiles versus the Epson paper profiles for my R2400, and the Epson profiles work better. So for my Greenpix I use the Epson matte heavyweight best photo profile. Maybe that's why RR is less expensive than some other paper - no research on profiles.

[KJ Smith]

I see why you like the Greenpix. Not as warm as the Aurora Natural but warmer than the Aurora White, nice tones.

I will be getting to the Bamboo soon.

Kevin

[Murph]

http://www.hahnemuehle.com/index.php...g=us&pkat=1286

Hahnemuehl Bamboo paper:
Using it along with my R2400, CS4, d/l'ed the ICC profile, and THE PRINTS SUCK!!!! CS4 has changed everything, I have the latest printer drivers, ICC profile, can anyone give me some suggestions. The prints look like they were done on a 50 dpi printer with muddy inks.

[studiocygnet]

So in the proof dialog have you gone back and forth between perceptual, saturation, relative colorimetric and absolute? That tends to affect my prints the most.

[Murph]

Thanks Ken!!!!!

[venchka]

Originally Posted by studiocygnet

So in the proof dialog have you gone back and forth between perceptual, saturation, relative colorimetric and absolute? That tends to affect my prints the most.

Probably the subject for a seperate thread. In words even I can understand, can you give us a brief explantion of those terms? Or do you just fire off 4 prints and keep the best one?

[KdLaneJr]

Originally Posted by studiocygnet

So in the proof dialog have you gone back and forth between perceptual, saturation, relative colorimetric and absolute? That tends to affect my prints the most.

I'll have to look into proofing like that. So far I haven't had the need (and never thought about comparing those settings when proofing).

Originally Posted by venchka

Probably the subject for a seperate thread. In words even I can understand, can you give us a brief explantion of those terms? Or do you just fire off 4 prints and keep the best one?

Wayne, I don't do much (as in pretty much, none) fine art printing at the moment. I'm using an espon R1800 and have only had an occasionaly difficulty getting good prints out of it.
I always let the printer mangage colors. I do this because I figure the paper manufacturer develops their ICC profiles for a specific printer and not for CS2/3/4. All I want from my photo software whether it is Lightroom I print from or Photoshop is a quality colorspace. For me that means printing directly from the profoto colorspace if I'm printing a .psd and printing from the sRGB colorspace if I'm printing from a jpeg file. The R1800 lets me select the "input profile" which I match to my file. Currently I leave rendering intent set to perceptual and then select the "output profile" specifically for my printer and the paper it is loaded with. I've only been using Epson papers so far, but Murph's post above is in regard to the information I've just shared with you.
I'd suspect that epson's paper in an HP printer will always cause a problem to some extent, based on the type of ink and competing printer/paper technology.

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by venchka

Probably the subject for a separate thread. In words even I can understand, can you give us a brief explanation of those terms? Or do you just fire off 4 prints and keep the best one?

You would almost never want to use the 'saturation' intent for a photograph, that's more for things like graphic illustrations, where you want to preserve the saturation of solid colors in things like bar charts and such. Absolute intent is also of limited use, unless you're trying to use one printer (say, an inkjet) to make proofs that simulate another device (like a printing press).

The two rendering intents that are most useful for photographic inkjet printing are 'relative colorimetric' (aka rel-col) and 'perceptual'.

The simplest way to explain rel-col is that colors within the source colorspace (your image) get directly mapped to the destination space (your printer profile) if the color is within the gamut of the destination space. The advantage of this rendering intent is that in-gamut colors are preserved. The downside is that colors that are out-of-gamut in the destination space get 'clipped' to the nearest in-gamut color. As you can imagine, this clipping can lead to loss of detail, because different out-of-gamut colors could get mapped to the same in-gamut color.

With perceptual intent, the source gamut is remapped into the destination space's gamut. The exact method of remapping is not defined by the ICC specification. Different profiling applications could use different approaches, and the more advanced profiling applications give you some control over how the mapping is done. The benefit of perceptual intent is that it can preserve the relationships between adjacent colors, even when those colors were originally out-of-gamut. The disadvantage is that all of the colors get remapped, even the in-gamut ones. This mapping can cause noticeable changes to your image, and not necessarily for the better. And it doesn't just affect color saturation, it will often cause changes in tonality is well.

If your image fits entirely (or even mostly) within the printer's gamut, rel-col is usually the best choice because it will give you the most accurate rendering. If your image has enough content that is out-of-gamut, then perceptual may be a better choice. Another consideration is that perceptual intent may also be preferred for low-key images or images with significant (but important) shadow areas, because most implementations of perceptual rendering that I've send will give a slight boost to the shadow tones.

If you have good profiles, you'll want to use them for soft-proofing, so that you don't have to waste a bunch of ink by printing with each intent to see which one you prefer. Soft-proof with rel-col first, and if the image remains relatively unchanged you're probably best off using that intent. If the rel-col soft-proof shows banding, loss of detail, blocked up shadows, or other problems, give perceptual intent a try and see if you like it better. Sometimes there's no substitute for actual test-prints to decide which is best, but soft-proofing can often show you problems that need fixing before you waste ink on a test-print.

[studiocygnet]

What Jeff said. Except that I sometimes use Saturation, depends on the "look". I don't think I've ever used Absolute Colorimetric.
Here is a short course in Photoshop proofing, with screen captures as I did it.

1. In the drop down menu go to Proof-Custom. Here is my first screen capture below.
In the "Device to Simulate" drop down you can see I have the profile of the paper I'm going to use, Velvet Fine Art best photo for an Epson R2400.
In the next drop down is where the different rendering intents are. As long as you have the preview box checked, you can see the difference as you go between Perceptual, Saturation, Relative, etc.
And very important, in the screen options, make sure you click the "simulate paper color" box, otherwise known as the "make my photo look like cr@p box".

2. My second screen shot is the first print dialog box. Under the color management section:
Proof is selected, and you can see my paper profile there.
Color handling, for a color photo, you have photoshop manages colors. If you are going to use the Epson Advanced B&W mode, you would say printer manages colors.
Under Printer Profile - again the paper profile that you used in the proof setup. This is where may people go wrong and put in Adobe RBG or Prophoto RGB. It's your custom profile again. Which you can see in the next pull down, "Current Custom Setup".

The next screen capture is the Print Settings, where I have the Velvet Fine Art/Advanced Settings/Best photo info from the profile selected.

And finally, y'all probably know this one, but in the color management dialog, if you're doing color and have checked "photoshop manages color" you turn off color management here.
If you are in advance B&W mode you would see a different screen with the ability to choose warm, cool, sepia etc.

And viola, you print and if your monitor is calibrated to what you see on the screen, you should be pretty darn close.