Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "jnhugo" 
<jacknadelle@h...> wrote:
....
> The files that print pretty well with PZO print light on OPM. 

Jack,

I am not surprised about that: profiles made with IJC tend to have open 
shadows in general and that makes them look lighter. On top of that, who 
knows what the profiles for the piezo plug in are doing for you now. 

Not only were they made ages ago, they weren't even meant  for the FS inks. I 
couldn't even get my own 1280 to work with the Selenium tones which 
allegedly work with the profiles that  Inkjet Mall sold as part of the plug in.  
They told me to try all their profiles until one worked! That is why I have 
abandoned using canned profiles of any sort.




> reprinted 21 step with opm, changed my dot gain to match, readjusted 
> the picture files and I think they print kind of muddy---

That muddiness would probably be the result of a mismatch between how the 
profiles for OPM work and however you compensate in the print.  Be careful 
with gamma settings: If you had been working in gamma 2.2 and sent one of 
those files to OPM - which defaults to 1.8 - you would get a way-light print. By 
adjusting your file to compensate then, you probably end up with an 
unintended "left turn". Check your gamma settings before you make custom 
dot gain curves etc, and see how they compare.

Generally, you want the least deviation between your scan and your print 
(other than local corrections). So, as a test, here is how you would proceed:

- make a scan that looks good in - for example - gamma 1.8

- open it in photoshop under gamma 1.8 (in the gray settings). It should look 
fine, except for local corrections.

- if you print it with OPM at this point, make sure OPM is set to 1.8

- let the print dry for at least an hour (if not a day, for maximum accuracy with 
FS inks). You can use a hair dryer but don't scorch the print.

- At this point, your print should match the monitor closely, but will look lighter 
in the shadows. Now, make a custom dot gain to match the two, but don't  load 
it as your gray space in Photoshop. Save it as a gray profile and load it as a 
soft proof.  

-Now you can switch back and forth between soft proof preview and the 
straight 1.8 gamma (loaded as gray space in PS) and you will see how 
different 1.8 is from your print. Make any final tweaks to your file under this 
preview and reprint. You should now have made the least possible 
adjustments to your file - only the small difference between the abstract 
gamma 1.8 as defined in photoshop and the dot gain curve you made to 
compensate for the specific print. 

Besides the above workflow example, keep in mind the following:

-  If you have IJC and you need to print "legacy" files, i.e. files you liked under 
an older workflow - such as the plug in, or RGB workflows, or Image Print or 
anything else - and don't want to be readjusting the files, you can make a 
profile to match the densities of the old workflow, and thus not risk breaking 
the histogram in those files - or do a lot of extra work.

- In a pinch, if you find your files print too light or too dark, or need more or less 
contrast, you are far better off trying the contrast / exposure adjustments in 
OPM than adjusting the files themselves under an "eyeballed" custom gamma 
curve. But because, unlike a profile, those settings are not saved in OPM, you 
have to write them down and reapply them every time you launch OPM.

 
Do I need to do anything to the EPSON profile 
> box or does OPM set the parameters of the printer? 

OPM completely bypasses the Epson driver. Use the Epson driver only to 
access the printer utility. No other settings have any effect with OPM.




Antonis