Digital BW, The Print

And B&W Mode is Same as Source anyway.

I have been corresponding with Bruce Fraser and he and Jeff are looking at
doing softproof profiles when they get a printer.  They will likely do for
each paper one profile for each of the main settings (neutral, cool, warm
and sepia for each of darkest, darker, dark, normal, light) so 20 profiles
per paper.  One can already use EyeOne Match to do your own profiles
following Carl Schofield's workflow (if you had a printer!).  Bruce will be
using a lot higher patch count than 21 or 51.

I still think the more interesting and relevant issue is profiling the
luminance axis.  This k3 situation is just like QTR a year or so ago (and
where black-only is today).  We found a way to soft proof but still did not
have a way of managing the difference between the workspace luminance
profile to the printer reflectance profile. The old 'why do my QTR prints
print "light" and "lack contrast" issue?'.

Epson has loaded into the driver five transforms - darkest, darker, dark,
normal, and light - but these must only be simple transforms keyed off the
paper selection.  Thus they take no account of changes in workspace nor
individual printer differences in linearity.  They certainly won't
accommodate a change to the inks.  Think of them as Black-only work flow
with five preset curves to choose from.  The smarter money will figure out
if there is a way to manage the luminance/reflectance compression with a
(greyscale) ICC output profile a la Roy's generics for QTR.  The only issue
I can see is in how Epson applies the transforms. Specifically, if they are
simply always applied to incoming file data then data already adjusted by a
ICC profile conversion that was intended to alter the file data to reflect
the print space would then still be transformed again. Then you're stuck
with what Epson has hard coded and it will become progressively out of date.

Steve


> From: Ernst Dinkla <E.Dinkla@...>
> Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 11:41:48 +0200
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [Digital BW] 2400 profiles are on the loose!
> 
> dfaprinting wrote:
> 
>> The 2400 profiles are on the loose!
>> http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1003&message=13547405
>> 
>> Don't get too excited, they have been edited to give very large gamut
>> in a profile viewer. Looks like you will need custom profiles right
>> out of the gate again!
>> 
>>  
>> 
> It is far too early to judge the printers by their profiles. The drivers
> show changes that may well explain why Epson decided to extend the soft
> proof gamut. There's an AdobeRGB mode in the 2400 and 4800 drivers
> (R1800 had that as a first) next to the sRGB mode that was the default
> of the older drivers. This influences the gamut possible. The gamut of
> the new Epson will differ from the R1800 as the LM and LC inks deliver
> more gamut in the light color mixes (better subtractive mixing, less
> paper white) while the R1800 has its gamut gain at the blue and red
> regions of the gamut. The CM inks of the R1800 were more diluted
> compared to the CM inks of the CcMmYKk Ultrachrome printers according to
> Robert Krawitz. A compromise between not using LC and LM and what the
> finer droplets could produce in color mixing at the highlights.
> Depending on the inklimit possible in the R1800 that could mean there's
> some gamut loss at the full C-M  hues. There's also a hue shift in the
> new 4800 CM Ultrachrome inks compared to the old C-M UC inks according
> to Joseph Holmes.
> 
> I think you need a very good 3D profile viewer to see where the shapes
> of the three printer generations differ. Not to speak of the differences
> between the soft proof part of the profiles and the actual printing
> gamuts and what is shown in a 3D viewer.
> 
> I doubt Epson is returning to inflated profiles again after their
> excellent Atkinson etc profiles for the UC printers.
> 
> How to get the new drivers is explained in the first message of that
> link above.
> 
> Ernst
>