Digital BW, The Print

Hi Ed

I don't have any smaller sheets of HPR left (nor any Epson Premium Luster).
I agree that the EAM Neutral softproof looks ever so slightly warm on screen
(but not as warm as the "warm" soft proof) when you flick the soft proof on
and off.   (I can't see the numbers in behind the profile to cross-ref.  Eye
One stores the results of monitor measurements in the profile in Lab format
(the "CIED" tag) but the measurements for printer profiles are stored as
wavelength measurements.  I posted the Quickread measurements in the Holy
Moly 4800 thread.  They seemed relatively neutral and the prints look very
neutral.)  Soft proofing is a very tricky business.  For example, one would
theoretically check "simulate paper colour".  But the eye is very good at
adjusting for white.  When looking at a proof on screen, if there is any
other white within the field of vision the image simulated white can look
really off (often quite blue).  Try checking it with the EAM Neutral Darker
soft proof and see what happens - that bit of warmth disappears fast and it
looks cold.  Nonetheless I will re-read the neutral test chart tomorrow.

Re doing other matte papers (eg Permajet Alpha), I am in two minds at the
moment.  I am reminded of when Carl Schofield figured out how to use Eye One
to make these soft proof profiles and we did them for our QTR curves.  We
then saw, and finally understood why, our prints came out "flat" and "light"
without an "s curve" at print.  In the end, Roy came up with his QTR ICC
profiles to help "manage/automate" the tonal compression.

I think this sort of approach is still necessary for the Epson Advanced B&W
prints.  The output is very linear but the dMax is so much lower than a good
display.  Hence an initial soft proof is a bit disappointing.  I am tempted
to encourage Roy to refine the matte ICC profile a little (for the wptp tags
and the relevant white and black points of his kTRC tag) - when he has time
- and perhaps then do soft proofs for output that has been converted (and
hence the underlying file numbers sent to the printer have been adjusted) to
this profile.

In the tests I have done thus far, prints look better if they have been
converted to QTR-Gray Matte Paper profile before being sent to the printer
(either "on the fly" or "permanently").  I really do think further
refinement of this profile approach is key - albeit as matte paper blacks
get better and better (hopefully) the issue gets less and less critical.

I think Epson is still trailing the great minds on this forum in this
regard...

Steve



> From: edrudolpho <erudolph@...>
> Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 20:10:16 -0000
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [Digital BW] 4800 Advanced B&W Soft Proofs
> 
> Thanks Steve!  Do you plan on making a softproof for PhotoRag?  Also, the
> Neutral EAM 
> soft proof seems on the warm side.  Is that the case?
> 
> Ed
> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Steve Kale
> <stevekale@b...> 
> wrote:
>> I have now added soft proofs for Epson Archival Matte paper.  Settings as
>> below.
>> 
>> http://homepage.mac.com/stevekale/stevekale2/FileSharing37.html
>